The bouncer at a Westminster bar who put a patron in a chokehold during told police he was trying to control the much bigger, combative man, according to documents released Tuesday.
The bouncer explained that Sammy Pickel, 23, was screaming profanities and being aggressive before being wrestled to the ground at Lodo’s Bar and Grill.
“He kept getting up,” the bouncer told investigators when asked why he put an arm across Pickel’s throat. “… He was just picking me up with him.”
The details came as part of dozens of pages of reports, photographs and videos released Tuesday by Adams County prosecutors, .
District Attorney Dave Young said the move was based on the unlikelihood of disproving self-defense in the March 12 altercation that left Pickel, who was six feet, five inches tall and weighed more than 250 pounds, dead.
The documents show, however, that Westminster police drafted an arrest warrant for the bouncer on the charge of criminally negligent homicide.
Also, an investigator at the Adam’s County Coroner’s Office ruled Pickel’s cause of death asphyxiation because of blunt force trauma to the neck and the manner of death homicide.
According to the documents, witnesses had varying accounts — between one and 10 minutes — of how long bouncers held Pickel down.
One witness told investigators bouncers were “choking him out” even after Pickel stopped fighting, the documents show. She also said Pickel was tapping one of the bouncers on the shoulder as if to signal that he couldn’t breathe.
“He’s face down on the ground and he’s not getting up!” a woman told a 911 dispatcher.
When officers arrived at the bar, they found an unconscious Pickel on the ground, “blue in color and he had blood on his face,” according to the investigation. There was vomit on the ground next to him as well as on his head, face and shirt.
Pickel had no pulse and appeared to be not breathing. First responders tried to revive Pickel, but after he arrived at a hospital he was still comatose and was placed on a ventilator.
He was removed from life support on March 15.
The documents show Pickel shoved another patron before he was taken down by bouncers at the bar, which coincides with earlier reports.
Denver7 reported Pickel’s fiancee, Suzette Meacham, said the push happened after a woman at the bar slapped Pickel on the buttocks. The woman walked away but soon returned with three men who picked a fight with Pickel, Meacham told the TV station.
Kate Kazell, spokeswoman for the Westminster Police Department, said bouncers at the sports bar stepped in to break up a disturbance when the bouncers grabbed Pickel around the neck.
“Our policy is to keep our hands off of our guest (sic) when we are asking them to leave our establishment,” said a Lodo’s Bar and Grill policy included in Tuesday’s document release. “We will not forcibly remove guests unless it is necessary to protect the safety of our guests or staff.”
Jesse Paul: 303-954-1733, jpaul@denverpost.com or @JesseAPaul
