Clarissa Sosin
Audio By Carbonatix
A year ago, on the early morning of March 16, a brawl outside Club DWNTWN spilled into the road. Club patrons and security guards threw fists as bystanders stood by and filmed.
In the middle of the chaos, a man with “security” emblazoned in white letters across his back darted through the center of the crowd to where his colleagues held a patron. He cocked back his arm and socked the restrained man with an uppercut. A chorus of schoolyard cheering echoed through the crowd as it dispersed and the man fell limply to the ground.
The man, a 22-year-old electrician and father named Rafael Montoya, died three days later from his injuries. No one has been charged with his death.
As video of Montoya’s beating spread in the immediate aftermath of the incident at the Latin nightclub in downtown Phoenix, his killing quickly became a subject of controversy.
The Arizona Republic reported that the agency hired to provide security, Blanco Protection Agency, was not certified with the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Footage showed two nearby off-duty Phoenix police officers doing close to the bare minimum to help Montoya. And the Republic also identified the security guard who threw the fatal blow as far-right YouTuber and Proud Boys member Charles “Brandon” Recor, who has a criminal record and a history of violence.
Now, exactly a year after Recor threw that punch, Montoya’s family members have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Recor, Club DWNTWN and Blanco Protection Agency in Maricopa County Superior Court. The suit was filed by Montoya’s parents as well as by the mother of his daughter, on the daughter’s behalf. Among other things, the suit accuses the city (and, by extension, the Phoenix Police Department) of negligent training and supervision, and accuses the club and its security agency of negligent hiring. Recor is accused of battery, a charge he has yet to face from prosecutors.
The two Phoenix police officers who stood by as Montoya was assaulted, Daniel Dominguez and Anthony Goldsmith, were not named as defendants in the suit. However, the suit notes that they “had a duty to protect Club DWNTWN patrons, including Rafael Montoya, from unreasonable risks of harm on or arising from Club DWNTWN’s premises.”
“No jury verdict is going to make their tremendous pain go away but they’re obsessed with obtaining justice and that’s what we’ll get them,” James E. Fucetola, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, told Phoenix New Times.
Phoenix spokesperson Dan Wilson declined to comment on the pending litigation. Neither Blanco Protection Agency, Club DWNTWN nor Recor responded to a request for comment.
Clarissa Sosin
What happened at Club DWNTWN
According to the lawsuit, Montoya was waiting in line outside the club with two friends when a security guard denied them entry around 2:20 a.m. The suit says Montoya “questioned” why he wasn’t allowed in, at which point Recor — who had been checking IDs — “forcefully removed” Montoya and a friend from the line.
“Thereafter, multiple scuffles broke out between Rafael, other patrons and security guards, lasting for several minutes,” the suit says.
Bystanders filmed much of the incident and its aftermath. The suit notes that Dominguez and Goldsmith, who were working private security for the venue, were standing just feet away from the fight. They failed to intervene until Montoya was limp on the ground.
“This wasn’t a quick tussle that only lasted a short period of time, not allowing law enforcement to take action,” said Fucetola. “This was a serious incident in which they observed blood, they observed fighting, they observed people getting hurt. And for over two minutes — not a mere five seconds, ten seconds — for over two minutes this went on, and that’s captured by all the video while these officers did absolutely nothing.”
Footage shows the officers approaching and standing next to Montoya after he fell. Other clips show them turning Montoya on his side and stopping other patrons from providing medical aid. They then “dragged Rafael off the street by his shirt and feet,” the lawsuit says, “contorting his body with blatant disregard to his visibly unresponsive and fragile condition.”
The lawsuit claims that the two officers knew or should have known that “Club DWNTWN had a reputation and history of its security personnel using excessive, dangerous, or disproportionate force against patrons.” The suit also blames the city for not properly training them to intervene and de-escalate the situation. Notably, the Republic reported that an internal police investigation cleared both officers of wrongdoing, except for not turning on their body-worn cameras.
The suit also says that Club DWNTWN and Blanco Protection Agency knew or should have known that Recor “had a history of violent, criminal, and/or otherwise dangerous conduct rendering him unfit to serve as a security guard” and that he was “prohibited or otherwise disqualified from working as a licensed security guard under Arizona law.” Indeed, there is no listed license for Recor in the DPS database, and the Republic reported that he has multiple felony charges in Arizona and Florida going back to 2004, including “weapons charges, assaults, burglary, identity theft and possession of illegal drugs.”
Last year, Blanco Protection Agency founder Manny Blanco told the Republic that he trained Recor but that Recor was not one of his employees.
“I would say he has good enough experience to not do stuff like that,” Blanco told the paper last April.
Montoya’s death was ruled a homicide. Though Phoenix police submitted the case to the office of Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, her office originally declined to prosecute Recor, whose identity prosecutors refused to release for months. But after the Republic identified discrepancies in the police version of events and video documentation of the fight, Mitchell’s office announced it would take another look at the case, asking police to also investigate the possible forgery of Recor’s security guard license.
