Deadly Crown Heights Club Reported To City A Decade Ago

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — The city received reports of a nightclub at 74 Utica Ave. —the illegal gambling club where four men were shot dead Saturday morning — more than a decade ago, city records show.

The Department of Buildings received two complaints in November 2008 of a "men's club" operating at 74 Utica Ave., where Terence Bishop, 36, Dominick Wimbush, 47, Chester Goode, 37, and John Thomas, 32, were shot dead just before 7 a.m. Saturday morning.

One caller reported the first floor became a nightclub seven days a week from mid-afternoon until the early hours of the next morning, records show.

Inspectors found no "violating conditions" when they investigated the commercial space that December and did not receive any follow-up complaints, a DOB spokesperson told Patch.

One year later, builders from filed permits to transform an existing first-floor funeral home into social club, DOB records show.

The request was denied in 2010 but a sign has since appeared on the front of the building declaring it to be the "Triple A Aces Private & Social Rental Space," according to GoogleMaps photo taken in May.

Police said they never received complaints of an illegal club.

"We don't have any complaints at this location for the past two years," NYPD Chief of Patrol Rodney Harrison said Saturday. "We have had no activity or no concerns from this location."

Bishop, Wimbush, and Thomas — all from Bed-Stuy — and Goode, of Canarsie, were fatally shot just before 7 a.m. Saturday morning, along with two men and a woman were shot and hospitalized, according Chief of Detectives Dermot F. Shea.

Shea said police found at least two guns and dice but no evidence of alcohol being sold inside the "sparsely decorated" room.

Bishop's brother Eddie Baldwin told the New York Post cheating during a dice game may have been the cause of the mass shooting.

“The detective told us it was a case of someone thought they were cheated and wanted their money back," Baldwin reportedly said.

Brooklynites will gather to mourn the four men with a candlelit vigil outside the Utica Avenue building Monday night at 7:30 p.m., officials announced.

"We’re coming together as clergy, anti-violence activists, civic leaders, and neighbors to reshine a light on the crisis of handguns in urban America," tweeted Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. "Join us."

This shooting and the death of four homeless men in Chinatown have caused New York City's murder rate to spike in October, bringing the number of city residents killed in a homicide up to 257, 1010Wins reports.