For weeks, promotions featuring scantily clad women drew crowds to the Azuz Hookah Lounge in the strip mall in Woodlawn without incident, until violence erupted last week.
“Everybody was partying. Everybody was cool. Next thing you know. Shots went off,” Tatyana Brown, working her first night at the club, told us after the shooting.
VIDEO: Woodlawn strip mall purge after club shooting
Shots, which left one man dead and three other people wounded.
The unlicensed club has since agreed to close, and the owner of the Security Business Center, Javed Aizaz, says good riddance.
“This should never, never happen again, because from now on, there will not be any hookah lounge or any of these crazy parties anymore,” pledged the owner.
Aizaz says he leased the space to the club owner under false pretenses.
The man had claimed he was going to open a grocery store there.”
A new tenant has already signed a lease to open a flower shop in its place.
“It was suppose to be a grocery store,” said Aizaz. “I have a lease. It says it’s a grocery store, but unfortunately, we found out it was more than a grocery store, and they were doing something else.”
Other tenants in the center, like Sonny Awan, who owns BBQ TONITE, have now endured two multiple shootings in less than two years, and they say closing down the problem club is a good start.
“I would like to have all the places of such, you know, backgrounds checked on in the area,” said Awan. “That would be nice. Whatever makes us safe.
To that end, Aizaz says he will be working with police to ensure all of the late-night businesses are honoring their required closing times, and he’s pledged to no longer take unscrupulous tenants at face value.
“Make sure they’re doing what the lease says, or else they’re in violation of the lease, and kick them out,” declared Aizaz.
Police have not made any arrests in the shooting last week that claimed the life of 28-year-old Elijah Lamback.
