Police crash car into St. Louis gay bar, then arrest co-owner

Bar:PM co-owner Chad Morris was arrested Monday morning and initially charged with assaulting an officer and resisting arrest.

A St. Louis police officer crashed his patrol car into a gay bar on Monday and then arrested one of the bar’s owners after an alleged altercation.

Chad Morris and James Pence, who co-own Bar:PM and live above it, said they came downstairs after they heard the crash at around 12:30 a.m. Monday morning, according to local NBC affiliate KSDK-TV.

“I was actually already in bed (and) I heard a loud boom,” Pence said, according to KSDK-TV. “I jumped up thinking it was an accident with a vehicle, and then, I saw it, and it was a St. Louis city police department vehicle in the front of our building.”

An officer was driving too close to a parked car Monday morning and then overcorrected and lost control of the vehicle, crashing into Bar:PM, according to an incident report from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.

The report says an “offender” came outside and “began shouting obscenities” at police officers after the crash, but it doesn’t name the offender. When one of the officers “attempted to calm the situation,” the report stated, the offender shoved one of them. The offender was arrested for assaulting an officer and resisting arrest, according to the report.