The Gateway Lounge Murder --- 1992

DRUG DEALER BLOWS  AWAY BYSTANDER  AFTER DISPUTE OVER ONE DOLLAR

By Kenneth C. Rossignol

ST. MARYS TODAY

LEONARDTOWN.  Just after 1:00 Saturday morning a man who was informed that his girlfriend had been dancing with two other men, attempted to barge into the Gateway Lounge in Louse Alley in Leonardtown. As the man was challenged at the door to pay the price of the cover charge of two dollars, he was also given the amount of three bucks for the privilege of passing through the doorway.  The man received only two dollars change from his five dollar bill, according to statements made to ST. MARYS TODAY by eyewitnesses.

The man, then furious over the one dollar difference, returned to his Chevy Blazer parked at the rear end of the back parking lot of the bar. The man then was involved in a fight, and according to witnesses, was tossed a silver handgun.  According to witnesses, the man, Reginald Robert McKnight, 21, of Lot C-1 Lord Calvert Trailer Park  then started shooting. McKnight is said to have fired as many as five rounds.

Lawrence Eugene Miles, 41, of Hollywood, was fatally injured by two shots, one of which went into his back and exited from his chest. The other bullet entered his arm and traveled through his chest cavity.  Miles was attended on the scene by the Leonardtown Volunteer Rescue Squad with emergency assistance also administered by Deputy First Class William B. Cease, who is a certified Emergency Medical Technician.  As rescue workers worked to establish vital signs, the crowd of shocked people continued to flow and surge in and out of the bar. Miles lay on his back on the barroom floor, where he had fallen after staggering in from the parking lot, gasping for help.

McKnight, ran to the rear of the lot and threw the gun into the trunk of a car and jumped a roadside ditch as he fled the scene.  Several friends of his also fled in a red Dodge Colt and were later stopped at the NAS main gate. A stray shot hit the valve stem of a nearby car, flattening the tire.

McKnight, a sailor attached to AIMD at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station is also drug dealer in the area, according to reliable sources.  McKnight and a compatriot, Lonnie Floyd, of the same home address, reportedly have  been supplying drugs to local street dealer Tony Young and other dealers in the Hills Trailer Park and Lord Calvert Trailer Park areas of Great Mills.  Sources told ST. MARYS TODAY within hours of the shooting that Tony Young was the actual murderer in the stabbing death of Douglas Alan Kovac three weeks ago, not the man the Sheriffs Department has charged-Tony Young's cousin Michael Young.

It is believed that Michael Young is taking the fall for Tony Young in return for unspecified future considerations and the possibility that the law would treat Michael Young more leniently because of his tender age of 18. Tony Young is 25.

Within an hour of the rescue workers removing Miles to St. Marys Hospital he died of his bullet wounds.

The tone of the crowd at Gateway was both sorrowful and angry. The bar owner "Tee" Miles told ST. MARYS TODAY that several of the people present told a new State Trooper that the gun was in the trunk of a blue car parked within twenty feet of the shooting, and that they had seen the weapon stashed there by McKnight.  The Trooper, according to those on the scene, ignored their pleas that  he search the trunk.  Two other men were held by the officers who were drawn from all parts of the county, leaving the county without any real police protection, questioned at the scene, and later released.

Corporal Lyle Long, the Sheriffs Department Supervisor, arrived at the scene and directed the investigation.  Officers on the scene included State Police Sergeant Joseph Casper, Trooper Duane Lowden, Trooper Anthony Riley, State Police Corporal Norman W. Dofflemyer, Trooper Eric Strucko, Deputy Wayne Delozier, DFC William Cease, DFC William Bell, and the first officer on the scene-Deputy First Class Robert Kwiatkowski.  Detectives Julian Schwab and Diane Thompson were requested by Corporal Long to respond and began working with the information that the officers had developed from interviewing witnesses.

By 3:00 am, the red Dodge Colt had been stopped at the main gate of the base, with two suspects taken into custody by the Sheriffs Department for questioning.

A few minutes later McKnight's Blazer was spotted where it had been dumped outside his trailer in Lord Calvert Trailer Park.

Information obtained by the investigators led Corporal Long , accompanied by Deputies Delozier, Kwiatkowski and Dung T. Ross to raid a home on Great Mills Lane looking for McKnight. They weren't disappointed.

The officers emerged from the house, known to be a center of drug activity, with McKnight in tow.

With the advise of Assistant States Attorney Richard D. Fritz, Detective Schwab filed charges of First Degree Murder against McKnight.