Barletta draws a bull’s-eye on bar

HAZLETON – Mayor Lou Barletta says he believes a bar at which multiple shots were fired and a man was stabbed early Saturday morning should be shut down.

“This establishment has been a problem, and I would like to see it get shut down before someone gets killed. I believe there’s been over 10 shootings in a few years connected outside or around this establishment. … ‘Nuisance bar’ is too nice of a term for that bar. It’s a place where gang members go and guns are fired at any time,” Barletta said Sunday.

City police responded to La Cantina Bar on North Wyoming Street at about 2:30 a.m. Saturday for multiple reports of gunshots fired at various areas around that location, according to a police press release.

Police said they received reports that a man produced a gun and began firing into the crowd. It was also reported that several patrons of La Cantina produced handguns and began firing also, police said.

Several live rounds of ammunition and spent shell casings from several areas around the bar were recovered.

Police said several men also engaged in a fight in front of the bar, produced handguns and began striking other men with their weapons. One of the men was also stabbed during the incident.

One of the men involved in the altercation – Bernardo Campusano-Abreu – had previously been arrested by city police on a felony charge of possession of crack cocaine with intent to deliver and had been deported back to the Dominican Republic in June 2006. Abreu illegally returned to the United States about three months ago, police said.

Abreu was charged with providing false identification to law enforcement and he was taken to the Luzerne County Correctional Facility, police said.

The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement was notified and faxed a detainer for Abreu. The federal agency will charge him with re-entering the country after having been convicted of a felony and deported. A conviction carries a minimum of five years in federal prison followed by deportation back to the Dominican Republic, police said.

Police also received reports that several vehicles that fled from the bar traveled the wrong way on one-way streets while patrons at the bar pulled out handguns and began shooting at the vehicles trying to leave. A man was struck by one of the vehicles leaving the scene.

Barletta pointed out that a Bloods gang member arrested with seven others on charges of selling crack cocaine and heroin last week had connections to a previous shooting outside the bar.

Herman Ayala, a reputed member of the Sex, Money and Murder Bloods gang set, allegedly told a confidential informant working for federal drug officials that the gang was responsible for a July 4 shooting outside La Cantina, according to court records.

Police are also investigating a single shot fired outside the bar during a fight on Oct. 3.

“It’s a problem. And if it’s not closed down, I feel we’ll be investigating a homicide there. The scene the other night is a scene out of the movies, not out of a small town,” Barletta said.

The mayor said police Chief Robert Ferdinand has been in contact with state police and the Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement about the bar.

A woman who identified herself as Stephanie, the bartender/coordinator of the bar, declined to answer questions over the phone Sunday night because, she said, the bar was too noisy and her cell phone battery was about to die. She offered to answer questions at a more convenient time in the future.

Barletta said Abreu’s arrest was particularly “disturbing and frustrating” for him because it’s “another case of the Hazleton police arresting an illegal alien for dealing drugs, he gets deported, comes right back over and ends up in Hazleton where we have to deal with him again.”

The mayor said it’s an issue he brought up to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Philadelphia, during Congressional hearings on illegal immigration in 2006. The mayor had been asked to testify, given his national celebrity after championing the city’s Illegal Immigration Relief Act, which barred landlords from knowingly renting to illegal aliens and businesses from knowingly hiring them. The act had been struck down as unconstitutional and is under appeal.

“Many (illegal aliens) are not crossing the southern border. They are Dominicans entering illegally through New York and New Jersey and coming down the East Coast,” Barletta said.

“If this guy (Abreu) could figure out how to get into the country so easily, imagine al-Qaida. I’m very frustrated with the federal government and its failure to protect us from people entering our borders illegally. I’m worried about our national security and the cost to communities like Hazleton that deal these people over and over again,” Barletta said.

The mayor said the federal government must crack down on fraudulent identification rings to prevent illegal aliens, especially convicted felons such as Abreu, from re-entering the United States.

“Unfortunately, we have to deal with it after they commit a crime. Who’s to say it won’t happen a third time? I have no confidence it won’t happen again,” he said.

HT News

La Cantina, site of Saturday shooting, stabbing, scene of gang activity, mayor says.

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