As patrons dined and employees hustled to serve food and drinks, a City Winery dishwasher chased a server into the dining room and fatally stabbed him, prosecutors alleged Friday.
A Cook County judge ordered Clarence Johnson, 41, be detained while awaiting trial after prosecutors described what they said was a shocking attack at the popular West Loop establishment. Johnson is charged with murder and one felony drug possession count in the slaying of his 47-year-old co-worker.
“This isn’t something that intimately occurred in a home,” said Judge Deidre Dyer as she delivered her decision. “It happened in a public restaurant in a public place where people don’t have an expectation of being murdered.”
Chicago police officers were called to the establishment about 5 p.m. Wednesday and found Francois Reed-Swain lying on the floor in the dining area, according to a police report. A witness pointed at Johnson and said: “That’s him. He’s the one who did it,” according to the report.
Before the stabbing, a bartender heard Johnson make statements “praising Jesus” and saw him lay facedown on the floor, Assistant State’s Attorney Anne McCord said. The bartender then observed Reed-Swain ask Johnson why he was on the floor, she said.
He got up, and the two walked away from the bar, the bartender reported to authorities. Then Johnson pushed Reed-Swain and started hitting him, McCord said.
Johnson chased Reed-Swain into the dining room where two patrons were seated, she said, and stabbed him with a knife. Workers ordered him to drop the knife and he eventually complied. The bartender rushed to help Reed-Swain, she said, but he was pronounced dead a short time later at Stroger Hospital.
After his arrest, Johnson made spontaneous statements that he “he didn’t mean to do that” to Reed-Swain, prosecutors said.
His public defender, Molly Schranz, argued that there was only limited surveillance video that captured the attack, and that attorneys have not yet viewed it. She also said that witnesses reported that it looked like the two were “play fighting.”
In response, McCord said the “horror of this incident” was witnessed by four people who struggled to comprehend what they were seeing at 5 p.m. in the middle of a restaurant.
“They thought they were playing. They could not believe what was happening in front of them,” she said. “What they were seeing was first-degree murder before their very eyes.”
In a statement, City Winery’s founder and CEO Michael Dorf, said he was devastated by the loss of a staff member to violence. He said the venue plans to add security.
“What we experienced is the opposite of what we try and deliver every day — joyous hospitality,” Dorf wrote in the statement. “Frank will be missed and his memory a blessing.”
