Theater District

Boston Police report a woman, 80, died of head trauma after being hit by a car at Stuart and Charles streets around 6:20 a.m. on Sunday.

The driver said he did not see the woman.

At present, the cause of the accident is still under investigation and no violations have been issued at this time.

Underbar says it's tightened up its customer screening to keep another guy from coming in and slicing people up, following a May 3 fight that left three stabbed.

An Irishman who took offense to a German woman being in the Tam on St. Patrick's Day head butted her in the nose, sending her to the hospital and the bar to the Boston Licensing Board.

Boston Police report a melee around 1:45 a.m. at Underbar, 275 Tremont St., sent three men to the hospital.

Police say the bouncer was attempting to break up a fight between two or three men when one of them whipped out a knife and stabbed the bouncer in the arm and stomach. Police say he managed to get himself to nearby Tufts Medical Center - where two other men went after also being stabbed, one in the face, arm, chest and back.

Police are looking for two suspects, both black men, between 20 and 30. One wore a yellow shirt, the other a plaid shirt.

Boston Police report people coming out of the clubs on Warrenton Street this morning didn't want to go quietly into the good night.

Instead, police say, the "boisterous and uncooperative" crowd milled about the parking lot there as five arguing women began fighting with each other:

Several officers from surrounding districts arrived on scene in an attempt to control the rowdy crowd. Officers had to draw non-lethal weapons (OC spray and batons) in efforts to disperse the crowd of combatants.

EMS responded on scene and treated individuals for OC Spray exposure.

A Dorchester woman was arrested on a charge of affray, while three women, from Hyde Park, Roxbury and Dorchester were charged not only with affray but with resisting arrest and being disorderly persons. A Randolph man found himself locked up on a charge of, yes, affray, as well as being a disorderly person, resisting arrest and assault and battery on a police officer.

A Theater District pizza place that stays open after the bars shut down on weekend nights faces possible penalties after fed-up police said they were tired of cleaning up the human, cardboard and cheesy messes left behind by its customers.

The Boston Licensing Board decides Thursday what action, if any, to take against New York Pizza on Tremont Street for a Dec. 1 incident involving up to 200 people on the sidewalk that ended with a particularly obnoxious customer pepper-sprayed and under arrest - and the street covered in pizza boxes, paper plates and slices of pizza.

Eater Boston dishes on Pigalle owner Marc Orfaly's online response to a customer who found herself disgusted with the pumpkin pie he served up on Thanksgiving. It's not pretty.

The Boston Licensing Board formally issued a "warning" to the Revere Hotel yesterday because three police detectives found the hotel giving guests a free glass of sparkling wine when they checked in on Sept. 6.

The warning has no practical consequences unless the hotel is found violating the statewide ban on free drinks again. Hotel attorney Dennis Quilty vowed that wouldn't happen because the hotel immediately stopped offering free drinks to guests after the police visit and said the hotel has started setting up the accounting system it will need to offer free drinks to guests.

Huh?

The Boston Licensing Board yesterday approved "bottle service" at Bijou on Stuart Street in the Theater District.

This being Boston, of course, a table of people would not be able to simply buy an entire bottle of liquor for the night. Instead, Bijou managers said at a hearing on Wednesday, a group would reserve a table and be assigned a tableside host, who would measure out and pour drinks - and then keep a running tab at roughly $10 to $12 a pop.

BPD brass, managers of the Wang Theater, the Charles Playhouse and the W Hotel and elderly residents of a Tremont Street building turned out en masse at a licensing hearing this morning to oppose Royale's request to increase its capacity from 770 to 1220, saying the area has enough trouble already with the club goers it has now.

Royale argues the increase would actually make the neighborhood safer because the concerts the new capacity would allow would get out an hour earlier than the current 2 a.m. closing time.

Royale, 279 Tremont St., is seeking permission from the city to expand its capacity from 775 to the 1,200 patrons its troubled predecessor, Roxy, was once allowed to let in.

The Mayor's Office of Consumer Affairs and Licensing holds a hearing on the request on Sept. 5. The office slashed Roxy's maximum capacity to 775 in 2007 after a skein of violations, from overcrowding in the streets at closing to cases of assault and battery.

Royale's request comes just four months after Mayor Menino cited it and several other Theater District night as trouble spots he wanted to crack down on after the closing-time murder of a Revere man in a parking garage used by the clubs.

Adam Castiglioni reports on a BRA vote tonight to allow a 19-story hotel with 240 "micro guest rooms" at Stuart and Tremont.

"America's Most Wanted" featured the case of the Army vet gunned down in the Theater District; report includes video of the fight in which Perez died and alerts us that Perez was shot in the back, allegedly by Peter Castillo, a Salem man who apparently fled Boston to New York and then to the Dominican Republic before police could catch up with him.

If Brad Kelly hadn't taken the photo, we never would have believed the new Revere Hotel on Stuart Street has a print of Joyce Kulhawik's disembodied hand. Or as Brad puts it:

From out of the void, the hand of Joyce Kulhawik reaches towards you. But, is it an invitation -- or a warning?!?

Copyright Brad Kelly. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

Two Lynn residents were arrested today on charges they misled police and a grand jury investigating the way a Revere man was gunned down on Tremont Street in April.

Luis Sepelveda, 27, and Janice Hardy, 22, are both pals of Peter Castillo, a Salem man who went missing before police could arrest him on a murder charge, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

A Quincy man who allegedly told police he never goes anywhere without his gun made an exception in the Theater District Saturday night - and now he faces a criminal charge, and somebody out there has a free loaded semi-automatic weapon, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office says.

John Murrett, 26, was arraigned in Boston Municipal Court this morning on a charge of improper storage of a firearm, the DA's office reports.

Murrett has a license to carry his Ruger LC9 semiautomatic handgun, but when bouncers at Club Royale found it on him during a patdown, they refused to let him in the club, the DA's office says.

Boston Police report they have an arrest warrant for Peter Castillo, 23, of Salem, for the April 28 murder of Stephen Perez on Tremont Street.

Anyone who knows where Castillo is can call homicide detectives at 617-343-4470 or contact the anonymous tip line by calling 800-494-TIPS or texting TIP to CRIME (27463).

Perez, an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan, was shot to death around 2 a.m.

Two musicians walked out of the Tam on Tremont Street early Sunday into a chaotic scene following one of your basic head-punching Theater District fights outside a neighboring pizza place.

That much guitarists Javier Reyes and Dustin Boudreau of Animals as Leaders and Boston Police agree on. Their accounts of what led to the two winding up in a cell at District A-1 for the rest of the night, and in court a couple days later for arraignment, however, diverge after that.

In an account posted on the Animals as Leaders Facebook page, a friend said the two men came out of the Tam on Tremont Street around 1:30 a.m., with Boudreau playing air guitar to the song that was playing inside. What they didn't know was that the area around Tremont and Stuart was swarming with cops, investigating a 1 a.m. fight outside New York Pizza, which left the fight's loser bleeding from the head and eye, the result of being punched repeatedly by the alleged victor.

According to the Animals as Leaders account, a cop immediately shoved boudreau and told him he interfering with a police investigation:

For the second time this spring, Bijou Nightclub on Stuart Street found itself before city Licensing Director Patricia Malone to explain why police found people perched on top of couches near the club dance floor.

To be sure, this time police detectives found only three people upright on couches - although an alleged wiseass jumped up on a couch when police ordered the initial three down - and the club said they were only standing there, unlike an earlier incident involving close to 50 people actively gyrating on the tops of couches, Malone heard at a hearing this morning.

Boston Police report the four men spotted running out of a parking garage around the time Stephen Perez was murdered may have been at a birthday party at Caprice/Underbar, 275 Tremont St. earlier in the evening.

Police are looking for the four men, possibly from Lynn, in connection with the death of Perez, an Army veteran, early on April 28. Police have asked anybody who may have taken video or photos around 2 a.m. in the area of Tremont and Stuart to contact them.

Venu in repose.

The Herald reports the mayor's fed up with deadly violence outside six Theater District clubs and wants the Boston Licensing Board to hold a club summit and consider rolling back their 2 a.m. closing times.

Separately, the owners of one of the clubs, Venu on Warrenton Street, skipped a hearing yesterday before city licensing director Patricia Malone to discuss why she shouldn't lift the club's entertainment license for a November incident in which four people were shot outside the club.

Friends identified the victim as Stephen Perez of Revere, whom the Globe reports had just returned from Afghanistan and who wanted to join the Revere Police Department.

The 2007 graduate of Revere High School was a sniper in the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division in Cop Charkh, Afghanistan.

Police report no arrests for his death, which happened around 2 a.m., Saturday.

Boston Police report finding a 22-year-old man with a gunshot wound on Tremont Street, midway between Stuart and Oak, around 2 a.m. He was taken around the corner to Tufts Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

Updated Tuesday afternoon.

Boston Police report a man who had just pulled into a space in a Tufts Medical Center garage on Tremont Street yesterday afternoon was pulled out by three men who parked their van next to him and who then beat him and tried to stuff him in the van.

The Boston Licensing Board today ordered Royale on Tremont Street to close for one day because a club worker offered to let an ejected patron back in if she serviced him orally.

The board ordered the punishment even though the club manager wouldn't let the woman back in after their quickie assignation - timed at four minutes by police - in the men's room of a neighboring hotel. The employee no longer works at the club.

Royale can choose the day it shuts down or appeal the punishment to the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission.