Denver licensing officials moved to shut down a Five Points nightclub Tuesday after an unlicensed security guard was accused of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a patron at gunpoint inside the club last month after it closed for the night.
City officials ordered the at 2036 N. Broadway to “cease operations and close immediately” in a summary suspension of the club’s liquor and entertainment licenses issued Tuesday. City licensing officials cited the July 18 attack, the club’s employment of the unlicensed security guard and allowing underage patrons to drink in the club as reasons for shuttering the business.
The security guard, 37-year-old Vincente David Espino-Gonzalez, is accused of holding an 18-year-old woman at gunpoint inside the club just after 2:30 a.m. July 18. He told the woman’s friends that she’d left, according to the summary suspension, and then held the woman at gunpoint inside the club and assaulted her for an hour in an attack that was largely captured by the club’s surveillance videos, according to the licensing documents.
Denver’s nightclubs close at 2 a.m.; City Council members this month rejected an effort to allow them to stay open until 4 a.m.
Espino-Gonzalez hit the woman, kicked her, held a gun to her head and sexually assaulted her, according to the suspension. She eventually was able to escape and flagged down a passing police officer. Espino-Gonzalez was arrested on kidnapping, sexual assault and weapons charges, according to Denver County Court records. He remained in jail Wednesday and is represented by an attorney with the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, which, as a matter of policy, does not comment on open cases.
Espino-Gonzalez was identified as the owner of Sparta Security & Consulting Services, a security company whose city license expired in 2024, according to the suspension. Espino-Gonzalez was not licensed as a security guard, the documents note.
On July 24, Denver police sent an underage cadet into the nightclub as part of a broader liquor law compliance operation. The cadet was allowed into the club and bought three alcoholic drinks, according to the suspension.
Wuilmer Varela Cardoza, the club’s owner, declined to comment Wednesday except to say that there is “a lot of false information out there” and that he was preparing for an Aug. 18 hearing in the licensing case in which the club has the opportunity to challenge the suspension.
Summary suspensions like the one brought against Olympus Discotheque are an emergency measure designed as a response to immediate threats to people’s health and safety, and are historically rare. The city has issued three summary suspensions this year, however, including one for a southeast Denver nightclub after a shooting at the bar left one man dead and wounded another eight people.
