The owner of a hookah lounge on the eastern border of Seattle’s Little Saigon neighborhood where a man was gunned down Monday morning is potentially facing $20,000 in fines for repeatedly staying open past 2 a.m., violating the city’s nightlife ordinance aimed at curbing violence at after-hours venues.
Firew Berjia, who owns the Evangadi Hookah Lounge at 419 Rainier Ave. S. in the Chinatown International District, has been cited five times since July for failing to comply with the ordinance. Passed by the City Council in April, the ordinance requires businesses to obtain liquor licenses and after-hours permission from the state Liquor and Cannabis Board to operate between 2 and 6 a.m., after stopping sales and locking up liquor.
To operate after hours, businesses must also hire security staff, install cameras at all entrances, check patrons for weapons and file a safety plan with the city.
Berjia, 38, contested each of the five code violations. Evidentiary hearings were held before a Seattle hearing examiner Tuesday to address four of them and a city inspector who testified read into the record an email from Seattle police Lt. Nathan Upton, providing additional information about the ongoing homicide investigation.
The shooting suspect had been a patron at Evangadi on Saturday and Sunday nights, into Monday morning, and an employee tried to get him to leave around 4 a.m. but he apparently refused, said inspector Quinn Thomas, reading from Upton’s email. Just before the 7:50 a.m. shooting, the suspect got into some kind of altercation with an employee just outside the business, at which point “he pulled a gun and shot into the business, striking the victim,” Thomas said.
The victim was described as a friend of the hookah lounge’s manager who sometimes helped out around the business.
The King County medical examiner’s office on Tuesday identified Khalif Hussein, 34, as the shooting victim and determined he died from a gunshot wound to the torso. His death was ruled a homicide.
A month before Monday’s fatal shooting, the commander of the Seattle Police Department’s South Precinct raised concerns about Berjia’s hookah lounge after Berjia applied for a liquor license for a restaurant and bar he wants to open in South Seattle.
According to police, there was an attempted robbery and assault, both in January, at the hookah lounge. In May, a large group of patrons initially stopped Seattle Fire Department personnel from getting inside to treat a man who overdosed in the bathroom and died at the scene, says the Nov. 3 letter written by Capt. Heidi Tuttle.
All three incidents happened after 4 a.m., after the hookah lounge should’ve been closed.
Tuttle’s letter also notes Berjia was arrested in October and charged with misdemeanor domestic-violence assault, “again demonstrating his ongoing disregard for the law.” That charge is still pending in Seattle Municipal Court.
“This applicant has repeatedly shown disregard with Washington State liquor laws and regulations … and continues to pose a threat to public safety by operating in direct violation of license requirements,” the letter says. “SPD is concerned the behavior at the hookah lounge … would be the same behavior at this bar/restaurant” since both have the same owner.
Appearing via Zoom at Tuesday’s evidentiary hearings for the code violations, Berjia seemed to waffle over whether he planned to continue operating after 2 a.m., arguing that he’d be unable to pay his rent and bills if he closed that early. He said he was trying to follow the city’s rules but was confused about the process.
In a reference to Monday’s shooting, he said, “It shouldn’t be part of this decision. It’s a separate thing” from the code violations.
Berjia said in a phone interview after the hearing that he wasn’t at the hookah lounge at the time of the shooting but is cooperating with police and provided access to video-surveillance footage.
In October, Seattle Hearing Examiner Ryan Vancil affirmed a July violation for staying open past 2 a.m. but waived the $1,000 monetary penalty for a first-time offense.
Each of the four remaining code violations now carry a possible $5,000 penalty, with the hearing examiner’s written rulings still to come.
At least a dozen people have been killed in the past 12 years at or near after-hours lounges and clubs and police have responded to 35 shootings connected to certain after-hours locations since 2020, collecting more than 800 shell casings, Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson said in April during discussions about the nightlife after-hours ordinance before it was unanimously passed.
The impetus for that ordinance was the August 2024 shooting death of 22-year-old David Escatell inside an illegal after-hours venue operating under the guise of a hookah lounge in the Sodo neighborhood. Then in March, Ozie Whitfield, 23, and security guard Julius Rodriguez, 29, were gunned down at the Capri Hookah Lounge in Rainier Beach. Both businesses were permanently shuttered.
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