The Boone County Sheriff’s Department is investigating a shooting at Peppers Nightclub on Sunday morning that left one man with life-threatening injuries.
Deputies responded to Peppers Nightclub at 4515 Highway 763 North at 3:40 a.m. and found a 21-year-old man with life-threatening injuries lying in he parking lot. A 22-year-old woman told deputies she had been shot in the right forearm, according to a news release.
The man is on life support as of Monday morning, Detective Tom O’Sullivan said. The woman was treated at the scene.
O’Sullivan said both Peppers and these individuals are known to be troublesome. He said the two groups of individuals have been in a long-standing feud.
“When they get around each other they pull out guns and start shooting,” he said. “The city has these shootings all the time. These are all people well known with the Columbia police and to us.”
The victims were both patrons of Peppers.
Peppers has had many incidents, with shootings, stabbings, prostitution, food stamp fraud and other disturbances. The Sheriff’s Department is working on shutting the club down.
“This is not the old west where the sheriff goes in and puts a padlock on it,” O’Sullivan said. “When you start getting into those legal procedures it becomes a little bit more cumbersome. There’s a lot of hoops you have to jump through before you shut a place down.”
O’Sullivan said he hopes the club will be shut down permanently during a hearing this week.
He was unable to comment on whether the guns involved were obtained and used legally.