At first, employee Diego Lona-Lopez said, it was the usual scene at the Ice Bar early Saturday morning: Drinks flowed and hip-hop music played as more than 100 people packed the Near North Side nightclub.
But people left the dance floor when two men began shoving and punching each other, said Lona-Lopez, a barback who assists the bartender.
He said they started running in a panic when they heard a single, muffled gunshot–a shot that killed Willie B. Posey, 26, the childhood friend, housemate and bodyguard of Chicago Bears defensive lineman Terry “Tank” Johnson, who also was at the club.
Lona-Lopez told the Tribune he was collecting glasses about 25 feet from the dance floor when the scuffle broke out about 1:30 a.m. When the crowd broke, Lona-Lopez said he saw a man in a white T-shirt kicking another man, believed to be Posey, lying motionless on the floor.
“I saw that a lot of people were running out the door,” added Lona-Lopez, who said he fled with several waitresses to a back room after the commotion started. “It was less than five minutes from when they started pushing each other and fighting to when I heard the gunshot.”
Police, who said Johnson was not a suspect, were still tracking down witnesses Sunday and piecing together what led to the shooting. No one was in custody Sunday evening.
But a source close to the investigation said the bar, at 738 N. Clark St., was hosting a birthday party for a woman in its VIP area when the shooting occurred, and detectives have questioned the people throwing the party.
Johnson says he mourns friend
As the Bears played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Sunday afternoon, Johnson, who was benched, sat at his Gurnee home with family members.
“I’m grieving right now,” he said, his ball cap turned backward, his face unshaven. “This man meant so much to my daughters and my family. He’s a great friend of mine … No one can understand what I’m going through right now.”
Standing in his garage amid a 1970s-era muscle car and a mud-spattered all-terrain vehicle, Johnson declined to discuss the shooting before a woman accompanying him told him not to say anymore.
The slaying of Posey came a day after he and Johnson appeared in court on drug and gun charges. Police raided Johnson’s home in Gurnee on Thursday and found six guns. Johnson, 25, who is not licensed to carry firearms, was charged with six misdemeanor counts of illegal weapons possession, and Posey, who lived in his basement, was charged with felony possession of cannabis.
Police sources said witnesses told investigators that a man repeatedly bumped into Johnson–a 6-foot-3, 300-pound defensive tackle–on the dance floor. Posey confronted the man, striking him, and both fell on the floor, the witnesses reported. As security guards separated them, witnesses saw the other man pull a gun from his pants and fire one shot, hitting Posey, sources said.
Johnson initially denied to police being at the bar, but he later told them he was there.
Lona-Lopez said he was collecting glasses near the bar when he heard the gunshot. As people fled toward the stairs down to street level, the lights of the club, until that moment off, came on, casting a harsh light on the dance floor where Posey lay, he said.
Police and paramedics arrived at the scene within minutes, caring for Posey, Lona-Lopez said. The bullet hit him in the left shoulder and bored into his chest, police said. He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he died a short time later.
Lona-Lopez said that in two years working at the club, he had never witnessed anything like Saturday’s shooting. He said didn’t leave the Ice Bar until about 3 a.m. Police told him and his co-workers not to touch or clean anything before they left, Lona-Lopez said.
The Ice Bar, which remains closed after the shooting, holds tobacco retailer, public place of amusement and tavern licenses, all of which list Jason Modzelewski as president.
Reached Sunday morning at his Elmhurst home, Modzelewski said he co-owned the bar when a student at DePaul University, but sold his half in February 2003 to a business partner, Anna Marie Amato.
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A woman who answered the door at Amato’s home in Crestwood Sunday afternoon said Amato, 50, was not at home.
Posey’s sisters implore gunman
Meanwhile, Posey’s sisters on Sunday pleaded for more witnesses to tell police what they saw and for their brother’s killer to do no more harm.
“We know you’re not going to come forward. But just don’t hurt anybody else,” said Gwendolyn Posey, 40, directing her comments to the gunman.
Friends and family members who gathered at the South Side home of another sister, Keshia Posey, 32, said police have not given them information about what happened at the bar.
Both sisters said the public is getting a disjointed picture of their brother, whom they called Bernard, his middle name, and whose nickname was “Quiet Storm.”
The sisters acknowledge that their brother made some mistakes, but added that Posey, who had four children, had been turning his life around.
He pleaded guilty in a drug case in 1999, and was sentenced to 3 years in prison sentence in 2001, according to court records. While that case was pending, he was charged in 2000 with armed robbery in Skokie and aggravated drunken driving. He received a 6-year sentence for robbery, and 1 year for DUI.
He was arrested again in November 2005 on several gun-related charges, including possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, but the case was dropped in March, court records stated.
“He did the best he could,” Gwendolyn Posey said. “For everything he did bad, he did double good.”
The family is still reeling from the loss of their father, Willie Lee Posey, on April 3. Their brother had been close to him, the sisters said.
“He was devastated,” Gwendolyn Posey said.
Posey was born in Chicago and moved with his parents to Tempe, Ariz., as a boy. He and Johnson met in elementary school and remained friends through their teens. Posey returned to Chicago in 1999 to care for an ailing sister. For the last six months, family members said, he lived at Johnson’s Gurnee home did and security work for the Bears player.
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