Shooting at Tacoma bar that killed 2, wounded 3, may have stemmed from argument over hairline

TACOMA, Wash. — A 28-year-old man is facing aggravated murder and assault charges after a fight at a Tacoma bar escalated into a deadly shooting early Sunday.

Court documents said cell phone video from that night showed the shooting may have stemmed from an argument over “someone’s hairline,” according to an officer’s report.

Probable cause documents say Alante Bryan Peterson, also known as “Dangerous,” killed a man and a woman inside the Alleycat Patio & Lounge and wounded three other people when he opened fire.

Survivors and witnesses say an argument broke out between Peterson, who was with a woman, and several men before Peterson fired five to seven gunshots.

We spoke with Andreas Bonapart, the uncle of the woman who was killed.

“Somebody argued, somebody she knew and she tried to stop it and I guess he just pulled out a gun and just started shooting,” Bonapart said. “You could hear the guns and then like I said I was talking to her brother on the phone and he works at Kaiser down the street and he heard it.”

We asked him how made him feel knowing that she stepped in and tried to stop it.

“She’s brave. She didn’t know it was going to happen, that’s just who she was. She wanted to protect everyone,” said Bonapart. “She’s an angel.”

A woman known as witness “A” told police the argument started when a man, L.C., continued to “insert himself into unwanted conversations with her and other females,” which after a while, began to annoy Peterson, court papers said.

An argument began and shortly after, Peterson opened fire, according to the witness.

We also talked Suzanne, the sister of the man who was killed.

“He was innocently trying to stop an altercation and his life got took. We’ll miss him a lot,” she said. “I just can’t believe there’s a picture laid out now of him and he shouldn’t be here. He should be at home right now.”

Suzanne said her brother was a protector at heart.

“He was a family guy. He was a protector. He didn’t have kids of his own but he treated all of his nieces and nephews as his own,” she said.

“A” also showed Tacoma officers cell phone video she had taken of the incident, which showed Peterson yelling at another man, likely L.C., and L.C. yelling back at him. The video cut off before the shots were fired.

One officer who saw the video said the footage portrayed several people getting into an “argument over someone’s hairline.”

“A” told the officer that the woman who had been with Peterson called her via Facebook about eight minutes after the shooting and told her she had better delete the video.

Bonapart said he wants people to remember his niece as the person she was.

“I don’t want people to remember her as, ‘Oh, some girl going out to a bar,’ that’s not what it was. She was with friends having a normal time, she’d work, never got in trouble. Remember her like that,” he said.

Peterson is charged with two counts of first-degree aggravated murder, two counts of first-degree murder, and three counts of first-degree assault.

“You’re still living freedom and my brother is about to be six feet underground he still gets to live and he doesn’t,” said Suzanne.

If there isn’t enough evidence for aggravated murder charges, Peterson will be charged with first-degree murder. His bail is set at $4 million.

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