Police respond to bar over 60 times

EJ’s Lounge is facing four citations and could lose its liquor license.

Police have responded RIVERSIDE — 66 times to a bar on Airway Road since June 2016 for incidents ranging from alarm calls to gunfire, and including a dangerous incident last month.

Riverside police on Thursday confirmed that EJ’s Lounge is now facing four citations that could result in the loss of its liquor license.

Members of the Ohio State Highway Patrol’s Investigative Unit visited the business at 4830 Airway

Road last Saturday, said Riverside police Maj. Matt Sturgeon. The Ohio Investigative Unit is responsible for enforcing Ohio’s alcohol, tobacco and food stamp fraud laws.

The charges issued to EJ’s are considered administrative, not criminal, and they go against the business’s liquor license. They could lead to a revocation of a liquor license. The citations include the business not displaying their liquor permit, improper conduct for drug use and giving away alcohol in conjunction with the operation of the business.

Sturgeon said Riverside police have had EJ’s on their radar since the volume and type of calls escalated in recent weeks.

On Jan. 17, there was a shootout involving high-powered weapons in the bar’s parking lot. Surveillance video from that night shows people in one vehicle leaving the parking lot and firing at other people and vehicles that were still in the lot.

“This is not just two guys pushing each other in the bar over a spilled drink, this is firing a high-caliber weapon,” Sturgeon said.

Police suspect the incident led to groups of people chasing each other and firing more shots in Dayton early the next morning.

“I’m coming up Airway Road, and I’m shaking all over,” a person said in a 911 call from the night of the gunfire. “I looked behind me, and I could see like, gunshots. It was right behind me, and I saw a bunch of orange flashes. And it sounded like someone was beating my car.”

Riverside police discovered three vehicles hit by bullets. One car had blood inside, although no one reported being shot. Sturgeon said the incident is likely gang-related.

No arrests have been made so far, and no one has been cooperative with the investigation, said police Maj. Adam Colon.

Colon also said that some of the people involved in this shooting were involved in other shootings in Dayton.

Sturgeon, who said he has worked with the Riverside police for over 20 years, said the building EJ’s is in has been different bars in the past, but he has never seen another business there that compares to the violent activity at EJ’s.

The bar’s owners had not been cooperative in the past, Sturgeon said, but have become more cooperative in recent weeks.

“We’re trying to make it as safe as we can at the moment, with extra patrols and manpower, but the long-term solution would be to challenge their liquor license,” Sturgeon said.

State officials will schedule hearings in a few months on the potential alcohol violations. The results of those hearings will determine whether EJ’s stays open.

“We’re not going to stop until something changes,” Sturgeon said. “We want them to clean up or get out.”

Calls and Facebook messages to EJ’s Lounge were not answered.