Strip club bouncer keeps bouncing along

Maybe it is apt that we say someone pays for his crimes, because the case of Reginald Allen sure feels more like a transaction than justice.

Here’s a guy who has lived only 32 years but has racked up 30 felony and 22 misdemeanor charges. He’s rarely been convicted.

Six years ago, in October 2009, Anthony Rice and his brother, Aubrey, and a cousin tried to go into a strip club in East St. Louis when Allen and other men stopped them, using racial epithets. Allen threw a brick through the Rice brothers’ car window.

The cousin ended the melee by firing a gun into the air. Allen got into his Ford F-150 and ran over Anthony Rice, killing the father of two, prosecutors said.

Nearly two years later, in September 2011, Allen is finally charged with reckless homicide.

Out on bond and working as a bouncer at his family’s strip club, Miss Kitty’s in Washington Park, Allen in 2012 beats a stripper in a restroom and holds her down so others can beat her, according to mob action and aggravated battery charges.

On Monday Allen was the next contestant on “Let’s Make A Deal,” and the reckless homicide charge for Anthony Rice’s death got tossed. The two felony charges for beating the stripper while he was out on bail got tossed. He pleads to mob action for tossing the brick through the windshield, and we’re told the potential sentence is the same as if he had been held responsible for Anthony Rice’s death — anything from probation up to six years in prison when Allen is sentenced.

By the way, Allen has already been held financially responsible for the death in one court. Anthony Rice’s two sons sued and a $750,000 settlement was reached in lightning time compared to the criminal proceedings.

The two-year delay in charges against this guy and the six-years that passed after the crime make it look like prosecutors could have had a rough time at trial. This may have been the best they could get without risking Allen walking free, again.

Yet the fact that Allen is not being held responsible for what he did to Anthony Rice or to the stripper, but only for throwing a rock through a windshield, doesn’t sound like justice.

Robert Rice, the victim’s father, summed it up: “I am disgusted by the whole system, the way this went down.”

This story was originally published December 9, 2015 at 1:00 PM with the headline "Strip club bouncer keeps bouncing along."