The town of Vaiden may consider lowering the time nightclubs can be open, after several fights at the 35/55 Truck Stop in Vaiden over Labor Day weekend.
In a special called meeting, aldermen discussed what happened the night the fight took place, why the response of the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department was delayed, and how to keep the incidents from happening at the club.
Mayor Mel Hawthorne said after doing some investigating, he was told the fight happened inside of Lucky 13 and then migrated to the truck stop. Alderwoman Lesia Hemphill asked Hawthorne to have Sheriff Clint Walker send over his schedule of where officers are and when an officer is in Vaiden.
“It says here there is supposed to be someone in Vaiden from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.,” Hemphill said. “If they were supposed to be here, then where were they?”
Alderman Alton Downs said the sheriff’s department does a good job patrolling Vaiden.
“Yeah, but if they’re supposed to be in Vaiden, then why did it take so long for someone to get here?” Hemphill said.
When asked how many fights were there, Hemphill said there were several videos that surfaced on Facebook of groups of people fighting after the altercation took place.
“There were three or four fights before some yelled ‘Police! Police!’ and they all scattered,” she said.
But, this isn’t the first time an incident has occurred at the club. Alderman Theodore Purnell said he went to the club and told the owner that he had to do something about the fights.
Hawthorne asked the board if they wanted to send a letter to the owner of Lucky 13 that if they didn’t clean up their act, they would be stripped of their privilege license to sell alcohol.
This also brought about the question of security at the club. There was also a question of jurisdiction and where the fight originally happened.
Purnell said the fight happened at the club before it went to the truck stop.
“So, the fight happened at the club?” Hawthorne asked, which would make it a county issue.
“But the fight happened in Vaiden,” Hemphill said, placing emphasis on “in Vaiden.”
“We can’t punish them,” Hemphill said. “If the fight started at Lucky 13, and they (security) got them off of their property then they did their job. We can’t help Gary didn’t protect his place.”
“But, it still happened in Vaiden,” Purnell said.
Downs suggested having the clubs close at midnight instead of 2 a.m.
“We’ve been having trouble out of them, this could be the way to stop it. We don’t have the police force, we have one officer, why not close them early. That’s just my suggestion,” he said.
Officer Orlando Bolden said when he was full-time in Vaiden, he would park outside of Lucky 13’s before the club closed and he wouldn’t have much trouble.
“How many calls did you have?” Purnell asked.
“I can count them on my hand,” Bolden replied. Hemphill and Hawthorne asked if he could retrieve the call log for how many calls he received while full-time in Vaiden from Lucky 13.
Bolden said he ran into the new owner of the club and told him that he had to get it under control or he could be called before the board to address the issues happening at the club or if it persisted the board could vote to shut the club down.
“Where did 2 a.m. come from?” Hawthorne asked, which led to some aldermen and women remembering their younger party days and who all agreed it’s been that time for quite some time. This led to another point, made by Purnell.
“Now we don’t want to punish Showgirls,” he said. “They’re not the problem, Lucky 13 is the problem.”
“No, we don’t want to punish them because of Lucky 13’s behavior, that wouldn’t be fair,” Hemphill said. “But we have to fix this before someone gets hurt.”
The board also discussed purchasing its own jumper for Vaiden’s Fall Festival and their fun day in December. Hawthorne said it would be easier to own a jumper rather than to rent it.
“I’ll look more into it and present it at the board meeting,” he said.
