Calverton restaurant hosted other dance parties without incident; police investigation continues

No arrests have yet been made in connection with the brawl that broke out early Sunday morning outside the Cinco de Mayo restaurant in Calverton, during which a 23-year-old man was stabbed.

A suspect in the stabbing, Demetris Brown, 22, of Riverhead, has not been arrested, Det. Sgt. Sean Egan said this afternoon. He declined to provide further information, saying the incident is still under investigation.

The stabbing victim was treated and released by Peconic Bay Medical Center, police said.

Riverhead police responded to a report of a large disturbance outside the restaurant, located on the corner of Middle Country Road and Edwards Avenue, at 3:36 a.m. yesterday, according to a police press release issued yesterday. They arrived to find a crowd of 75 to 100 people fighting in the parking lot of the restaurant, in the roadway and in the parking lot of the FedEx building across the street, the release said.

Riverhead Police called in several surrounding police agencies to assist in dispersing the unruly crowd, the press release said. See prior story.

Riverhead Supervisor Sean Walter, who also serves as police commissioner, said today in response to online comments questioning the response of Riverhead police, that officers followed the correct protocol in waiting for other police agencies to arrive on scene before attempting to stop the fight or disperse the crowd.

“Even if you had every sector car and every [Riverhead] officer on duty respond to the scene, you’d still only have a handful of officers on scene relative to a very large, unruly crowd,” Walter said. “You would end up with injured officers,” he said.

The supervisor said Riverhead police have been “monitoring the situation” at the restaurant, which he said has been leasing the premises to organizers of dance parties. He said he plans to speak with the property and restaurant owners this week.

“They are going to see this as a problem, or we will be working with the State Liquor Authority to revoke their liquor license,” Walter said. 

Police said in yesterday’s press release they learned after the incident that Cinco de Mayo had hosted “a highly publicized ’90s style Old School Hip-Hop R&B’ party Saturday night.”

 The restaurant has been the scene of dance party events in the past. A former Flanders resident, Ticero McClinton, has hosted dance parties there under the name “Ticero’s Night Life.” He hosted “Thursdays Ladies Nights,” which were advertised as weekly events. On March 21 he hosted a “Caribbean Night” and on March 29 a “Brooklyn Invasion Party.” 

But McClinton had nothing to do with Saturday night’s party, he told RiverheadLOCAL in an interview this afternoon. He said he understood it had been a private birthday party.

The restaurant has been the site of at least one other dance party event that McClinton didn’t host, an event on Friday, March 28 dubbed “Spring Fever Friday.”

McClinton’s last event at Cinco de Mayo was March 29, he said today. He said he had told the owner and people who work with him that he wouldn’t be returning there. “But I hadn’t made it public yet that I wasn’t going to be there any more, I just stopped printing flyers.” 

As soon as things got out of hand outside the restaurant early Sunday morning, people started calling him, McClinton said. “People who know me know this isn’t the way I do business,” he said. The 1998 Riverhead High School graduate said he was very concerned that his name would be tarnished by this weekend’s events.

“We never had any kind of issues or problems,” McClinton said.

Police had never been called to the restaurant in the past, except for a couple of automatic alarms, the town supervisor said.

Walter said the restaurant’s liquor license is newly issued and the SLA would not look kindly on a stabbing taking place during a large brawl at the premises.

According to online records, the SLA issued an on-premises liquor license to 5 de Mayo Restaurant Corp., operating under the trade name Cinco de Mayo, on Nov. 20, 2013. 

An employee at the restaurant this afternoon said the owner was not on premises today.