A Madison man is dead and another man in custody after a violent bar fight outside a downtown establishment late Wednesday.
Around 11:38 p.m. police responded to reports of a stabbing outside the Plaza Tavern at 319 N. Henry St., according to a Madison Police report. The victim who was, identified by Dane County Coroner John Stanley as 22-year-old Juan J. Bernal, suffered two stab wounds to the chest. He was transported to a local hospital and was initially listed in critical condition until he died Thursday morning. Police said Bernal was not a UW-Madison student.
Witnesses said the stabbing resulted from a brawl that erupted between two groups of men inside the bar and later moved outside, according to police. Ald. Mike Verveer, whose District 4 includes the Plaza, said Plaza employees reported that the fight alegedly began over a disruption in music playing on the bar’s jukebox.
MPD Public Information Officer Joel DeSpain said it did not appear the suspects knew each other.
Patrons at the Plaza chased the suspect and another man down the street and detained the man who had been with the suspect until police arrived.
Police said the investigation then led to a downtown residence where they arrested Justin R. Stout, 31, of Madison and tentatively charged him with first-degree reckless endangering safety. After Bernal died from injuries sustained in the stabbing, however, police changed Stout’s tentative charge to first-degree homicide.
DeSpain said police are continuing to investigate what sparked the violence between Bernal and Stout, but maintained the public was not in any danger in connection with the stabbing.
“This was a dispute between two groups of people that did not involve anyone else,” DeSpain said. “It was isolated and it was a targeted attack.”
Areas surrounding the Plaza, including Peace Park and a nearby parking lot, remained taped off Thursday as police retraced the route Stout took to his residence, listed in court records as a West Gilman Street apartment. DeSpain said investigators were looking to see if Stout discarded anything as he ran home following the stabbing.
Bernal’s death is Madison’s sixth homicide of 2008.
