You sure it was a pistol not a rifle round.
Motive murky in club gunfire
Alleged gunman bought weapon following storm, friend says
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
By Paul Rioux
St. Tammany bureau
A man accused of spraying 30 rounds from an assault rifle outside a Covington bar Friday night bought the semiautomatic weapon after Hurricane Katrina to protect himself from looters, a friend said Monday.
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"He was pretty proud of it," Shane Legere said. "He knew I had some guns as a hunter, and he had to have a bigger one. He was pretty competitive about stuff like that."
Tony R. Lambert, 34, of Covington, was subdued by off-duty federal narcotics agents after he allegedly pulled the
AR-15 rifle from his car and blasted away at the packed Columbia Street Tap Room & Grill, police said.
No one was injured in the 11:18 p.m. incident, but the spectacle of a barrage of gunfire in the heart of downtown Covington was enough to draw a steady stream of curious onlookers three days later.
Motorists drove slowly past the bar Monday afternoon, pointing out bullet holes in the building's brown stucco walls.
"Look, there's one right above the door," said one man, leaning out of the passenger seat of a car. "I wonder what set him off?"
Motive a mystery
Steve Ahrons, the bar's owner, said police told him the shooting may have been sparked when Lambert saw his girlfriend dancing with another man. But Legere said Lambert doesn't have a girlfriend.
"It may have been a girl he met that night, but he wasn't dating anyone," said Legere, who has been letting Lambert stay in a travel trailer outside his Covington area house.
Legere said he doesn't know what might have angered Lambert, a registered nurse who has no criminal record in St. Tammany Parish, according to records at the parish courthouse.
"He was wound a little tight, but there was nothing that would make you expect something like this," he said. "I'm just kind of in shock."
Lambert was born in Picayune, Miss., and moved in his teens to Slidell, where he graduated from high school, Legere said. After a stint in the Navy, Lambert enrolled at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he made the dean's list and received a nursing degree in May 2000.
Legere said Lambert held a few nursing jobs and is currently employed as a construction worker, repairing storm-damaged homes.
Lambert was living in a Mandeville home before Katrina, but he had to move out to make way for his roommate's displaced New Orleans relatives. A few weeks after the storm, Legere let Lambert, his former college roommate, stay in the old trailer outside his house north of Covington.
Off by himself
Legere said he hadn't noticed any major changes in Lambert's behavior recently, although he did say Lambert had started spending more time alone in the small trailer.
"He used to eat dinner in the house with us, take a shower and then go out to the trailer just to sleep," he said. "But lately he had been spending most of his time out there."
Lambert was booked with 10 charges, including two counts of attempted first-degree murder of a federal agent alleging he fired at two Drug Enforcement Administration agents, who hid behind parked cars and tackled Lambert when he stopped to reload, police said.
Ahrons said bar employees brought everyone inside and locked the front and back doors after the shots rang out.
"There was no pandemonium, no screaming people rushing for the doors," he said. "There were a lot of questions like, 'Hey, what's going on?' But everybody pretty much stayed calm."
More security
He said business has more than doubled since Katrina, fueled by the parish's population explosion and the influx of out-of-state construction workers.
Ahrons said he has increased security at the club, noting that there were five security guards on duty Friday night as The Boogiemen played for a crowd of about 150.
"The vibe of the place was very good. Everybody was having fun, and I was thinking, 'What a great day to own a bar,' " he said. "Then the shooting occurred."
Ahrons, who said he didn't notice a drop-off in Saturday's crowd, said he's considering hiring a private firm to oversee security.
"We're going to take all the necessary steps to ensure everyone's safety," he said. "We've worked too hard over the past 10 years on this place not to."
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Paul Rioux can be reached at
[email protected] or (985) 645-2852.