WINONA, Minn. – Two men were stabbed, one critically, in a bar fight that spilled into the street at closing time. Police broke up the brawl and arrested Larry Tramone Hudson, 40. Witnesses said that Hudson pulled a pocketknife during the fight and slashed two of the dozen or so people in the melee. The wounded men, both 23 years old, were taken to the Winona hospital. One man was transferred immediately to a Trauma Level 2 hospital in LaCrosse with stab wounds to his rib cage. The other man was kept at the Winona hospital for a thigh wound. He was described in stable condition. All this started about 1 a.m. at the neighborhood Cornerstone bar at 501 West Fourth Street. Police arrested Hudson at the scene. At the jail, however, the jailer refused to accept him because he too had a knife wound. Officers took him to the hospital emergency room. Once cleared medically, Hudson was taken back to jail and booked finally at 4:06 a.m. The tentative charges: Two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon. Police found the knife, bloodied, under a car in the Cornerstone Bar parking lot. Apparently the knife had been discarded in haste. The knife was a a seven-inch weapon with a three-inch blade, police said.
Hudson. Wounds show in mugshot after bar fight and the street brawl that followed.
Prequel to brawl
Police said the people involved in the fight were uncooperative when asked to explain what happened. The Cornerstone Bar is a neighborhood hangout. The clientele mostly know one another and have for years. A bartender told police that an argument had erupted just before closing time and escalated quickly. The bartender said he separated the disputants as best he could and ordered everyone out, which police said was confirmed by the bar’s surveillance video. Outside, the bad blood escalated further. When police arrived, combatants were going at it in the West Fourth and Olmstead intersection.
Next step in investigation
Consistent with the clubby nature of the Cornerstone bar, nobody was talking. In writing up their report, police called them “uncooperative.” Police were unsure they will ever figure out what started the disturbance. Clearly a lot of customers had been drinking a lot. Police planed to go door-to-door in the morning to see if anyone in the neighborhood had Ring door-bell cameras or other surveillance devices that could shed light on details of the knife being pulled.