East Dallas’ OT Tavern closed permanently after the bar served its last rounds of drinks on Monday.
The closure came almost a month after the City of Dallas filed a lawsuit against the landlords of the buildings housing OT Tavern and neighboring business Bar 3606, located at the 3600 block of Greenville Avenue. The suit was filed on June 17, following years of neighbor complaints about gun violence on Lower Greenville Avenue.
Darren Dattalo, a neighborhood association member who has been a resident since 1999, said that the community is “fed up.”
“They’ve had enough. There are people who have already started moving out,” Dattalo said.
The City said in the lawsuit that the property is connected to at least seven crimes, including the fatal shooting of Cameron Ray on the morning of March 18. Twenty-year-old Ray was with a group of friends when he was shot. Footage from a surveillance camera showed Ray’s group was in an altercation with another group when a black SUV drove by and fired shots, striking Ray in the head.
Tivione English, 21, and Aries Jones, 29, from Louisiana, were charged with murder in connection to the incident.
Cowboys cornerback Kelvin Joseph was also linked to the murder after police released surveillance footage of him and five other people before the shooting. As reported by The Dallas Express, the football player was identified by fans and interviewed by police but was not arrested, as investigators determined that he was only a passenger in the SUV and did not shoot the victim.
In response to the neighborhood pushback, OT’s neighboring bar, Bar 3606, said it was working with the City to reduce crime in the area, iterating that they do “not condone any sort of violence.”
Bar 3606 owner Rajen Melwani said in a June statement that he has been doing “everything [he] can as a responsible human being and neighborhood business owner, to make sure [his] patrons along with the neighbors are kept safe,” The Dallas Morning News reported.
“We have been addressing these issues with our councilman, city attorneys and our landlord (and their counsel),” Melwani said, adding that the bar had increased its security presence and implemented bag and weapons checks.
Bar 3606 is still open. It is unknown whether that bar also intends to close down, but a June 30 post on its official Instagram page announced events for the coming weekend.
OT Tavern owner Shaun Marchant told The Advocate about his bar’s closure date but declined to provide additional information. The establishment has not publicly announced or commented on its closure on social media.
