Bikers start brawl in Key West bar, police say

About 15 bikers wearing colors of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club started a brawl inside a Key West bar during the weekend’s annual Poker Run charity event, according to police.

No arrests were made but bikers left the owner of Rumor Lounge, 430 Greene St., and an employee each with a swollen eye and a bloody lip, police said.

Three unidentified suspects, each between 30 and 50 and described as heavyset with beards, were listed in the report of the battery, which began at 3:20 a.m. Saturday at the bar steps from Duval Street.

All three were wearing a jacket or shirt with an Outlaws insignia — a skull with two pistons crossed behind it — while one also wore a shirt with a “white swastika,” Officer Igor Kasyaneko wrote.

Police said they will review any video taken at the bar that morning, when by the time officers arrived, men wearing Outlaws gear were fleeing the bar, some in taxis. Not one stuck around to give a version of what happened.

John Mafera Jr., 40, the bar’s owner, was knocked him down with a punch to the face after he refused a request to eject a woman a biker said needed to leave “before there was a problem,” the report stated.

Mafera told the biker that as the owner he decides who leaves and who stays, starting an argument that quickly became violent, witnesses told police. When James Kenny III, 32, of Key West, tried to help Mafera get up, he said the bikers attacked him.

Soon, bartenders and staff were jumping in trying to help “but were almost attacked also,” Kasyaneko wrote.

Michelle Moseley, 46, of Key West said she was the woman who got into an argument with one of the Outlaws, prompting them to ask for her removal. Police haven’t given a motive or explanation for the brawl.

The club, formed in 1935 at a bar outside Chicago, has a website offering T-shirts that read “Snitches are a dying breed,” for both women and men.

This story was originally published September 21, 2016 at 9:27 AM with the headline "Bikers start brawl in Key West bar, police say."