HARRISBURG—Believe me when we tell you there’s plenty to go around in this first fight of 2013 at the biker bar in Harrisburg that should have been shut down more than a year ago, Poor Boys.
The blame can go to the city council for not taking action against the bar after a nearly fatal beating occurring there in July 2011 has resulted in a civil suit against the place, and this continuing even after the city (specifically, mayor Eric Gregg) issued an edict about liquor license holders in the city allowing fights to occur at their establishments.
The blame can go to the ineptitude of the majority of the Harrisburg police department, who seem only to wish to effect good arrests when they “feel like it”… or the fact that Harrisburg police chief Bob Smith—who shouldn’t even be a police chief in the city—can’t seem to manage his way out of a soggy paper bag.
Or the blame could go toward whoever is responsible for not locking up Roger Combs in November after the devastating meth lab explosion that hospitalized Mary Beth Hutchison….out of which there have been NO arrests, despite the obviousness of the situation.
What the fuck is going on in Harrisburg that this kind of thing can happen? in any other town in the state, or with any other bar, the following scenario would have resulted in the jailing of the alleged perp:
Eyewitnesses report that a New Year’s party was rockin happily post-midnight, and all was well at Poor Boys up until about 1:25 a.m., when multiple reports were made to police that there was a fight and a stabbing.
Roger Combs, 27, was identified as the one who had pulled a knife on one Jason Teagarden, a Harrisburg man in his late 20s. The stabbing is said to have punctured Teagarden’s lung and may have perforated his colon; our eyewitness reports indicate that after he was taken to Harrisburg Medical Center, he was transported to Deaconess in Evansville, where he underwent surgery at about 10:30 this morning, and was still in surgery at 12:30 when we were talking to a source about it. Our source has reported that Teagarden’s condition has been unofficially declared “very bad.”
These same eyewitnesses have reported that prior to Teagarden’s stabbing, Combs had pulled a knife on two other people at Poor Boys, and that when they spoke with police about it (specifically, Kenny Shires and Brent Davis), the officers confirmed this report.
Nevertheless, Combs has NOT been arrested.
Combs was reported to have been in the company of others when the incident went down: Shelly Pickering, Scott Adams and Dena (spelled phonetically) Winters. It’s unknown if any of them have been questioned, or whether anyone will be. As you can see by Combs’ record, he remains a convicted felon walking around Saline County doing whatever he pleases. So the question is: why?
We don’t know.
What we do know is that the number of injured people around Roger Combs continues to grow, and as with anyone this idiocy-prone, one of those injured person is going to eventually be a dead person. THEN will anything be done? Probably not. It seems that the only recourse anyone has in Saline County when it comes to something of this level of irresponsibility is civil suits…and not everyone has the wherewithall to pursue that course of action.
Much of this goes back to the power that the place, Poor Boys, has, what with Robert “ChickenBob” Wilson at the controlling helm. We’ve been bitched out repeatedly over noting his part-ownership in the place. Save it, however; we know better, and anyone who says otherwise is a blind fool. That would be the only reason Gregg doesn’t shut the shit down; he can’t, ChickenBob to too scary for most people to handle. And that’s pathetic, because he’s nothing but a corrupt former politician who scares people with his law degree and high-and-mighty talk.
If you people in Harrisburg ever hope to get this menace off your backs, you’re going to have to make changes. You’re going to have to demand the mayor take action against the place or explain why he isn’t. You’re going to have to demand that a new chief of police be appointed and the housecleaning begin. You’re going to have to demand that arrests be made when something this obvious occurs. Or you’re going to have to do what a lot of folks have found themselves doing—making fast tracks out of Saline County. There’s a reason why the poverty in Saline ranks it as number 97 of 102 counties in Illinois. It’s depressed. The brain trust in the county is abandoning it quietly. The scum is left to take over. And this is what you have as a result.