OFF THE WIRE
Lawsuit: He ordered eviction of club tied to fatal shooting.....Tom Lomis said he was aghast when he was called to his rental property after a Tacoma teenager was fatally shot there last year.
The 3,000-square-foot warehouse-style building had been transformed from a storage unit with neatly stowed household goods to a lowbrow party house that reeked of booze.
“I walked into the building, and I did not recognize the interior of my own building,” said Lomis, who has owned Bill’s Towing and Garage since 1971. “I consider myself a victim. This gang took over my property, and I had no clue what the heck was going on. I would never, ever allow that.”
On Tuesday, two attorneys filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Bill’s Towing, alleging it allowed after-hours parties hosted by a motorcycle club on its property and that lack of security led to the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Billy Shirley III on Aug. 17.
Lomis said he rented part of the building in the 1600 block of South Center Street to a clean-cut, polite man who agreed to use the space for storage and nothing else. He collected $600 monthly for the rental, which was housed on the same property as storage space rented by a church and a junk yard for abandoned vehicles.
More than six months into the yearlong lease, his former tenant called Lomis to the property for a roof leak. Lomis recalled seeing a motorcycle parked in the back but nothing to indicate anything was amiss.
Then, two weeks or so before Shirley was killed while leaving a party put on by the Global Grinders motorcycle club, Lomis was told that a gang fight had broken out on his property. Neighbors also mentioned there had been parties held late at night.
Lomis’ family evicted the tenant, telling him he needed to move out by the end of August.
“They had a last party there, and that’s when this incident occurred,” Lomis said Wednesday.
Bill’s Towing is leasing the space again to a different tenant, but it had to gut the building and do significant work first.
The motorcycle club trashed the upstairs area where the former tenant leased space. There was a bar built from black floor vinyl, a makeshift stage and a refrigerator. Plastic wire ties and junk couches littered the room. The stench was overwhelming – a combination of large quantities of alcohol and a lack of plumbing in the building.
Lomis insisted he knew nothing about the parties and would not have tolerated that kind of behavior on his property. He said he set his alarm nightly and went to check on the rental after being notified of possible parties, but never found any.
“They should be going after the guy who rented it from us, not us,” Lomis said.
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/04/19/2487502/property-owner-denies-knowing.html
