SEATTLE — A Belltown bartender is speaking out after a customer attacked him, throwing a glass at him so hard that it shattered and cut his neck.
It happened at Belltown Provision early Friday morning. The bartender is okay, but shaken up.
The bar has had a problem with break-ins, according to owner Jon Robinson, suffering six over the last year and costing him more than $100,000. He’s since had metal shutters installed over the windows.
This incident, though, was on a different level.
“It was very violent,” Benjamin Grady Kiser-Lowrance, the victim, said. “Like, can I throw a 99 fastball at you real quick?”
Kiser-Lowrance said he was glassed after refusing to serve a man after last call. An image of the aftermath shows his neck and chest covered with blood. He keeps thinking of how much worse it could have been.
“In any different direction, an inch up, down,” he said. “If I had leaned forward or back, if he had thrown it any differently.”
The attack was captured by a surveillance camera. The attacker is seen trying to grab drinks and bottles off the counter. Kiser-Lowrance tries to stop him and he throws a glass at him.
The attacker is then seen walking out, appearing to grab another drink off the counter on his way.
Thankfully, one of the customers was a nurse and patched him up.
“This is just another piece on the stack of growing problems that have been happening in this community,” Kiser-Lowrance said.
Belltown Provision is an upscale bar, but its surroundings lately are anything but.
Robinson told KIRO 7 that drug addiction is running rampant in Belltown.
“We are trying to keep our patrons safe, and it seems like sometimes we are kind of thrown to the wolves out here,” he said.
Robinson said the city cleaned up other neighborhoods ahead of the World Cup, but why not the one where he built a business?
“We just have a situation where we have a lot of excess drug use that creates an environment which makes it hard to run a small business,” Robinson said.
The city recently announced plans to address similar issues in the CID, North Beacon Hill and along Aurora Avenue. Robinson hopes Belltown is next.