PHOENIX, Ariz. – A go-go dancer at a gay bar is being hailed as a hero for helping to subdue an angry straight patron armed with an ax, Fox 10 reports.

The dancer, whose name was not reported, grabbed the angry man from behind his neck after he threatened to harm patrons at the Oz bar.

Bar manager Adrian Carlos Maldonado, who had cut off the angry man from drinking and kicked him out of the bar after he got into a verbal argument with his girlfriend, had tried to prevent the ax-wielding man from re-entering the club by blocking the metal front door.

The suspect, identified as Lawrence Aguirre, 40, struck the door several times with the ax. The police report noted slash marks on the metal door.

After a while, silence ensued outside and the bar manager assumed that Aguirre has left the area. But after Maldonado stopped barricading the door, Aguirre rushed back into the bar with an ax, setting off a wild scene as he threatened the bar manager. “I will kill you,” the ax man said, according to the bar manager.

After the go-go dancer jumped on the suspect and the bar manager struck him on the head with a pool cue stick, Aguirre was subdued, and other bar patrons helped to hold the suspect down until police arrived.

"It's so weird that something like that happened but I was really happy everybody pulled together and helped me out with getting this guy on the ground and having him arrested, because this guy was crazy," Maldonado told Fox 10.

Authorities charged Aguirre with two counts of aggravated assault and one count of criminal damage. And because Aguirre is accused of using homophobic slurs during his attack, prosecutors are weighing whether to add bias-crimes counts to the list of charges.









