Technicality will allow Benji Brown’s to reopen

By Tim Yovich

An assistant city law director says she doesn’t agree with the decision.

WARREN — A city lawyers warned neighbors of a North Park Avenue nightspot which was closed temporarily as a nuisance not to take the law into their own hands after a judge said the bar could reopen.

Lashawn Ziegler, owner of Benji Brown’s, which was ordered closed temporarily last week, said Tuesday that he doesn’t know if he’ll reopen after Judge John M. Stuard of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court dismissed a lawsuit brought by the city to close the bar permanently. Ziegler said he wanted to first talk it over with his family.

“It’s a slight setback today,” Atty. Traci Timko-Rose, an assistant city law director, told a group of people who live around the bar. “I couldn’t disagree more with the judge.”

“Please, don’t do anything stupid,” Timko-Rose implored the neighbors who went to court Tuesday to listen to a scheduled hearing in which the city was seeking to close the bar permanently.

She told them that Ziegler has a right to reopen, even though a new complaint will be filed by the city.

Timko-Rose said Judge Stuard dismissed the case on a technicality. The judge agreed with defense attorney Gilbert Rucker III that the caption of the case should have included the state of Ohio bringing the complaint on behalf of the city of Warren and simply not the city filing the case.

Rucker’s defense team was joined Tuesday by Attys. Jeffrey Goodman and John Fowler.

Judge Stuard set another hearing for 1:30 p.m. April 24.

Timko-Rose called on the neighbors of Benji Brown’s to “please keep cool,” noting she didn’t want to see any of them in jail for illegal activity during the weekend.

Gregory Hicks, city law director, pointed out to the group that they have been working for eight months to shut down the bar and the neighborhood has been peaceful since it was closed.

The city boarded it up April 8 after Judge Stuard granted the temporary order. It was based on a raid by agents of the Ohio Investigative Unit of the Ohio Department of Public Safety.

The complaint seeking the closing order said that an undercover investigation found that alcohol was being sold, though the bar didn’t have a liquor permit.

The city police department had been called to the bar 57 times since the first of the year, including for a homicide in the parking lot.

One of those in the group listening to the city lawyers was Donald Leipply of Howland, financial officer of American Legion Post 278, which is next door to Benji Brown’s.

Leipply said if the bar reopens and patrons park their vehicles in the post parking lot, he’ll have a fleet of tow trucks to tow the vehicles out of the lot.

yovich@vindy.com