Sports Bar in Hollywood Is Shut by State After Slaying

State officials temporarily closed a Hollywood bar on Monday after a deadly shoot-out there Friday that renewed concerns that the popular Latino sports bar had become a magnet for crime and the state had done little to control it.

The state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control announced it was shutting down the La Iguerita sports bar for 45 days because the club sold alcohol to intoxicated patrons on two occasions in January.

The timing of the shutdown was “purely coincidental” and unrelated to a brawl Friday night in which one man was killed and at least three others wounded, said Dan Toomey, ABC enforcement supervisor for the Los Angeles/Wilshire District.

Toomey also said ABC officials had scheduled a meeting Thursday with the owners of the bar to discuss the revocation of their liquor license.

Members of the Ivar Hawks Neighborhood Watch group picketed outside the Yucca Street bar Monday, charging that the ABC had failed to do its job despite repeated requests that the bar be shut down.

“It’s tragic that (someone) had to die to get the ABC to act,” said Hawks spokesman Joseph Shea. “Bloodshed and violence have been the history of this bar. Only a highly publicized death . . . moved the wheels of bureaucracy.”

No suspects have been identified in the shooting, authorities said.

Shea said that his organization had lobbied the state for more than one year to close the bar but that officials were unresponsive.

Bar manager Floyd Castaneda would not comment on the shutdown, but said problems in the neighborhood were not caused by patrons in the bar. The bar’s two owners, identified in state documents as Cruz Antonio Guevara and Ramon Valenzuela, could not be reached for comment.

Toomey said his agency would have acted sooner to close the bar but that the ABC “has its hands tied” by a legal system through which bar owners can drag out the closure process for more than three years while appealing their cases. Bars are permitted to stay open during appeal, pending decisions by administrative law judges.

The ABC sought to get the bar’s license revoked last November, but instead allowed it to stay open and on probation for three years with the stipulation that any violations could result in the revocation of its license.

Although two such violations occurred in January, when the bar was alleged to have served alcohol to intoxicated patrons, no such action was taken, Toomey said. “We felt we didn’t have a good enough case,” he said.

The reason the ABC finally decided to seek a permanent shutdown of La Iguerita this week, Toomey said, was because of more violations uncovered by investigators during undercover visits to the bar in February.

Legislation pending in Sacramento, he said, would allow ABC officials to shut down a bar through a court injunction rather than through the lengthy administrative hearing process.

“If we had that bill, we would have been able to address this problem earlier,” Toomey said.

Toomey said his staff of 13 enforcers has to watch over 9,000 licensees within the district.