Bar Bouncer Charged With Murder After Harbor City Man Dies : Security: Police say the victim was thrown down a flight of stairs. The owner of the Redondo bar says he didn’t know the bouncer had a criminal record.

A bouncer at a Redondo Beach bar was charged with murder Wednesday after a patron he had thrown off a deck and down a flight of stairs to the pavement died of massive head injuries.

Eric Charles Meyer, 32, of Torrance, a convicted robber who for the past nine months had been working as a door host at Pancho & Wong’s near King Harbor, was being held at Los Angeles County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail. Meyer was arrested Saturday for critically injuring 25-year-old Michael Alvey during an attempt to eject Alvey from the bar.

Police and witnesses said Alvey, a Harbor City cabinetmaker and father of three, got into an argument with another customer. Police said the 200-pound Meyer, in an attempt to force Alvey to leave, dragged the 135-pound man out to the wooden deck in a headlock and threw him down the stairs to the concrete pavement.

Alvey was rushed to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center with massive head injuries and died Tuesday morning without regaining consciousness.

Meyer’s co-workers, who asked that their names not be used, said they weren’t surprised by the incident. A week previously, they said, Meyer had carried a customer out of the restaurant on a bar stool and thrown the man down a flight of steps.

“He had a reputation,” one waitress said.

But Meyer’s employer, David Letchworth, said he was unaware that Meyer also had a criminal record. According to court documents, Meyer was convicted in 1982 of the strong-arm robbery of a parking-lot attendant at the Union Bank parking garage on Hawthorne Boulevard in Torrance, where Meyer had once worked.

Records show that Meyer and another man, Richard Blake Grover, were found guilty of robbing the attendant at knifepoint during the evening of June 3, 1981. Grover, who wielded the knife, was sentenced to three years in state prison. Meyer was placed on three years’ probation and ordered to spend a year in county jail.

At a sentencing hearing in August, 1982, Meyer’s attorney urged the court to be lenient, saying the robbery was an “isolated incident” and describing Meyer as “an exemplary citizen” and a college honor student.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Elliott Alhadeff concurred with the recommendation and urged the judge to consider Meyer’s “sterling prior history.”

Meyer’s neighbors said he had been living in Torrance with his parents in recent years, and bar owner Letchworth said Meyer came to him with excellent references. Although employment applications at Pancho & Wong’s ask whether the applicant has a criminal history, “there was nothing, to my knowledge--in writing or verbally--about him having a record,” Letchworth said.

Letchworth said Meyer claimed that the bar-stool incident had been in self-defense. He added that Meyer had always seemed to be very professional as a door host. After Alvey was injured, however, Letchworth fired Meyer. Under restaurant policy, he said, any employee who uses excessive force is terminated immediately.

The owner said he wasn’t at the bar when the incident occurred shortly after midnight Saturday. But he noted that, in preparation for the Labor Day crowds, the manager had just that afternoon reviewed the excessive-force policy with all the door hosts, including Meyer.

“My heart is just ripped out over this. It’s just terrible,” Letchworth said. “From what I know, the manager wasn’t informed when (Alvey) was ejected. If only I’d been there, I’m sure it wouldn’t have happened.”

Alvey’s wife, Betsie, said her husband seldom patronized Pancho & Wong’s but had gone there Saturday for a “boy’s night out” with a friend whose wife was not home. A former serviceman, Alvey had been stationed in England with the U.S. Air Force and had moved back to California a year and a half ago, she said.

The Alveys, both South Bay natives, had two sons, ages 6 and 1, and a daughter, 4. Betsie Alvey said she is jobless and penniless, and plans to sue the bar.

“My husband is a passive person,” she said. “Of all the people in the world, this shouldn’t have happened to him. I would like that man (Meyer) to meet my children. I would like to see the look on his face when he sees my three kids.”