Bend man charged in downtown altercation

Two people went to the hospital and one of them was arrested on assault and other charges late Saturday night after an altercation at the Summit Saloon and Stage in downtown Bend sent a bouncer and a patron crashing through a plate-glass front window, police and the establishment’s manager said Sunday.

Officers were dispatched around 11:45 p.m. to the Summit regarding an altercation at the restaurant/bar, located at 125 NW Oregon Avenue, said Sgt. Kurt Koester.

Officers arrived to find a crowd of about 50 people at the location, Koester added.

An investigation found the altercation involved several people, including two who were taken to the hospital for treatment — customer Ronald Paul Carter, 45, of the Bend area, and the bouncer, who police and Summit Manager John Simak did not identify.

Carter was arrested by citation at the hospital on charges of third-degree assault, first-degree criminal mischief and disorderly conduct, Koester said.

“Alcohol consumption was a contributing factor in this incident,” the sergeant added in a news release.

Simak said the business will be “pressing charges to the fullest” against Carter, who he said “assaulted our bouncer” after he and others were told to leave and escorted outside.

“They were told to leave, without any touching,” Simak said. “This guy didn’t like that, and decided to take that to the next level.”

Both men were outside when, according to Simak, Carter “blindsided” the bouncer, and both went smashing through the front window. Fortunately, he said, no one was in the area just inside that window.

With the smashed-out front window temporarily boarded up until replacement, Simak said of the bouncer: “He’s okay — got a concussion, some light scratches. Thankfully he’s not hurt badly. He’s a tough dude. He got blindsided – tackled. It was like a scene from a movie.”

However, one of the patrons at bar, who asked not to be identified, claimed that “the bouncers completely instigated the whole thing and continued it to the point where one of them threw (Carter) through the window,” calling it a “complete use of excessive force.”

The witness said Carter was not kicked out, but instead walked outside to help a friend who was “taken down by a few bouncers,” and that he “did not start the fight in any way. …. While I didn’t see the fight start, I personally witnessed the bouncers continue the fight until it escalated into someone being tossed by staff at the window. I even saw one of the bouncers smack a girl in the face to the ground when she tried to protect her boyfriend from them. It was ugly.”

The witness did not see the fight start but said shortly after “there were a few bouncers on top of (a man, who was not Carter) on the concrete (sidewalk).”

The witness agreed with Simak that Carter and the bouncer went through the window from the outside when it broke, but said Carter “did not blindside the bouncer — he was slammed up against the glass — I don’t know what hit — and it smashed.”

“Instead of keeping the peace and calming the situation,” the witness said, “it was clear that the bouncers were fully engaged in the fight and made it worse, even though many were screaming and trying to get them to stop.”

Bend police Cpl. Adam Juhnke, the second officer to arrive, said the 50 or so patrons already were out of the bar when they got there, as the Summit had decided to close after the incident, and staff was sweeping up the broken glass.

“Each side has its story” in such cases, he said, adding that “we did our best to track all the witnesses” and interview them. He estimated they had talked to a “handful” of people who were close enough to see what happened first-hand, as opposed to upstairs or at the back of the bar.

“The investigation is complete, based on what we have right now,” Juhnke said. “But if other people have other information, or videos or photos, we would certainly encourage people who witnessed the dispute to contact us.”

Whatever the sequence of events, with the shattering of a roughly 10-by-10-foot plate glass window, the corporal said (in comments echoed by others): “It could have been a lot worse.”