Patron shot in strip club parking lot

It was 6 a.m. closing time and tempers were flaring at a Hallandale Beach strip club when an argument spilled into the parking lot and gunfire erupted, police said.

When it was over, multiple shots had been fired, a woman was struck and the shooter had gotten away.

Two cars blocked in a silver Mercedes-Benz as it tried to leave Cheetah Gentlemen’s Club early Friday. One of the men involved in the argument was driving the Mercedes and it was his passenger who got shot, Sgt. Aaron Smith said.

The shooter was in one of the other two cars. One of those vehicles might have been white, he said. No other description was available.

The woman was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood with a gunshot wound in the torso and was expected to survive. Her injury was not lifethreatening, Smith said. He did not disclose her identity.

She was a customer at the club, Smith said.

Cheetah, famous for its full-nudity, full-friction offerings, just off Hallandale Beach Boulevard and west of Interstate 95, has had its share of news.

Back in 2009, the strip club made headlines when the South Florida Sun-Sentinel obtained five months’ worth of footage showing customers getting lap dances in private back rooms. The tapes had been seized from the Cheetah during a criminal investigation into prostitution and drugs at the club.

The city shut the club down for two years. It reopened after the city commission struck a deal with owner Joe Rodriguez allowing for the Cheetah Hallandale Beach’s return.