About Liz Zemba

Liz Zemba 412-601-2166
Staff Reporter
Tribune-Review

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Wednesday - May 22, 2013

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Connellsville Industrial Enterprises dissolving, showering nonprofits with donations

The mayor of Uniontown said he is thankful no one was hurt when a .40-caliber bullet traveled through a bar's ceiling and into two upstairs apartments — including his own — early Friday in Uniontown.

“Thank God nobody was walking back and forth,” Mayor Ed Fike said on Monday as he described how the bullet entered his penthouse apartment on the top floor of Park's Casino on Connellsville Street.

“It came up through the ceiling above the bar, through the downstairs' apartment's bathroom, and up through my floor, in a hallway,” Fike said. “It sounded like a cannon.”

Police said the bullet was fired by one of the bar's patrons, Tamerra Nicole Hall, 25, of 12 Carlisle St., Uniontown.

Hall is charged with carrying a firearm without a license, discharging a firearm into an occupied structure, reckless endangerment, disorderly conduct and criminal mischief.

In a criminal complaint, police said Hall displayed a handgun during a “disturbance inside the bar involving several persons” at 1:45 a.m. and then fired it into the ceiling. The bullet traveled through the ceiling and into Fike's upstairs apartment, police said.

Fike said he owns the building at 308 Connellsville St. but turned over the liquor license and bar ownership to his daughters before he became mayor in 2008. Kimberly Marshall and Renae Phillipy own the liquor license, according to the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board's website.

Fike said he was in the downstairs bar, helping Marshall and another daughter, Gina, clean up when an altercation broke out among Hall and other patrons.

“Somebody must have been trying to take the gun off her,” Fike said. “She whipped the gun up over her head, like she was going down, and that's when the shots were fired.”

Fike said no one was in the bathroom of the apartment directly above the bar when the bullet pierced the ceiling.

One person who was asleep in his apartment was immediately awakened when the bullet continued up and through his hallway floor but was not injured, he said.

Hall left the bar before police arrived but turned herself in on Saturday.

She is being held in the Fayette County Prison in lieu of $25,000 bond.

Liz Zemba is a reporter for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 412-601-2166 or lzemba@tribweb.com

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