Parade-watchers at Molly Maguire’s for the Rumson St. Patrick’s celebrations on March 10. (Photo by Wil Fulton. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
A fight between an intoxicated bartender and a borough employee appears to have led to the negotiated five-day shutdown of Rumson’s Molly Maguire’s Black Point Inn in Rumson that starts next week, police reports suggest.
Larry D’Angelo, 45, a laborer in the public works department, and Chris Moran, 33, a bartender, were arrested after the March 11 incident, which occurred at the tail end of St. Patrick’s celebrations that included a parade.
According to the reports, police responded shortly before 1 a.m. to a call about “an employee out of control and causing a disturbance in the kitchen” at Maguire’s. There, police said they found D’Angelo lying atop Moran and restraining his arms against the floor.
“There was blood on the floor and broken tiles on the floor,” one of two reports filed by responding officers said.
Neither man would say why they’d been fighting, and bar staffers claimed not to know, both reports said.
Moran was handcuffed with his hands in front of him because he was lying on his back, “resisting the entire time” as police took him to a patrol car, and “having trouble standing due to his level of intoxication,” said one report.
Once in the squad car, Moran began punching the windows, and had to be restrained on the ground when police removed him to cuff him behind his back, the report says.
Moran, a Highlands resident, was issued a summons for disorderly conduct in the form of fighting and resisting arrest. He was also transported to an unidentified hospital for unspecified injuries, and released a short time later.
D’Angelo, who lives nearby, was checked out for unspecified injuries at police headquarters by volunteer EMTs. He was issued a summons for disorderly conduct for fighting.
There’s no mention in the reports of video evidence referenced by Mayor John Ekdahl in an interview with redbankgreen earlier this week. He and other town officials, however, have refused to disclose the activity underlying a charge that that Molly Maguire’s had “maintained a disorderly establishment.”
As part of a settlement of the charge, the bar’s lawyer negotiated a settlement with the borough that calls for the tavern to be closed from June 30 through July 4.
Bar owners Kathy and Mike Maguire were said by a bar employee not to be immediately available for comment late Friday morning.
