A shootout began at a London nightclub as a health and safety consultant investigated reports of crime and disorder at the venue.
The Ricco Lounge and Bar in Kensington could have its licence revoked after the gun battle which came amid council safety concerns over the drinking spot.
As a consultant watched punters come and go from the venue in the early hours of October 13, David Nevitt was caught up in what’s believed to have been a gun battle.
Mr Nevitt ended up crouching behind a car as shots rang out, and members of the public scattered.
Nobody was injured in the incident but several bullet casings were found in the area. The Metropolitan Police claims security guards at the club allowed customers in without searching them and managers took four days to inform police one customer had been in possession of a firearm.
The Met claims the club is associated with ‘serious crime and serious disorder’ and wants its licence revoked. The venue has volunteered to shut its doors since the incident on October 13 and said there were ‘a vast array of factual inaccuracies’ in the police report and would not comment until after the licensing meeting.
When asked to specify the inaccuracies, they did not respond.
Police said an investigation is currently under way. One suspect has been charged with the possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life, and violent disorder.
In a submission to Kensington and Chelsea Council, which is reviewing the Met’s request, police said CCTV footage clearly showed multiple customers not being searched with a metal detector wand even though one was available and in the hands of one of the door supervisors for most of the night. They also criticised guards for not having two wands to ‘supplement’ their searches.
The report read: “The searches that were carried out were of a substandard quality and would have provided little to no deterrent to anyone intent on carrying weapons or drugs… If a customer was intent on taking a firearm (or any other weapon) into the premises, then the quality of searching would likely not have detected it.”
The Met also said at least 10 customers were allowed in without their IDs being scanned and said the organiser had no guest list for the private event arranged that evening, which was described as being a footballer’s birthday party.
A review of CCTV found at least one man being let in using an ID that belonged to another person while the venue admitted allowing another in after he showed guards a photo of his passport on his phone.
The council report said guards then let this person enter his own birthday and name into the ID scan system. Police said this, along with mismanagement and poor decisions by the Designated Premises Supervisor, Stephano Fogu, and the father of the licence holder, Vittorio Di Bello, directly resulted in the firearms incident.
They said CCTV and staff accounts show Mr Di Bello, who holds no managerial positions in the company, was the person Mr Fogu deferred decisions to.
The police report said a taxi driver had approached a security guard and told them they had seen a male in possession of a firearm.
According to police, this information was passed on to Mr Fogu, who then discussed it with Mr di Bello, the head doorman and the party organiser at 2.05am and a decision was made to remove the man from the premises.
The police said at no point were they alerted by anyone at the premises about the presence of a firearm that morning or over the subsequent days. The report read: “This lack of action is both shocking and completely unacceptable. A call to police would have prevented the subsequent shooting, which was only 90 minutes away from occurring.”
A Chelsea Events & Entertainment Ltd director, the company which owns Ricco Lounge and Bar, said the decision making process that night ‘may have’ included comments from Mr di Bello, who was working in the cloakroom.
The director said Mr di Bello would no longer be allowed on the premises while an investigation was ongoing.
The statement also claims that although staff provided CCTV, they had failed to tell police on multiple occasions about the tip-off and about Mr di Bello’s role that evening.
Police then told management they were concerned about the link between Ricco Lounge and Bar and Jako, a nightclub for which Mr di Bello had been the licence holder.
That club was forced to shut following a triple stabbing in January 2022. In a meeting following the incident, police said Giovanni di Bello, the licence holder for Ricco Lounge and Bar, and Vittorio’s son, barely contributed to the discussion while Mr Fogu was not present at the meeting.
Police were told this was because Mr Fogu had been suspended. Another statement found Mr Fogu and Syed Gilani, a director of Chelsea Event & Entertainment, had been part of the management structure at Jako.
Police claimed the duo had brought ‘the same inadequate and reckless management style’ to Ricco Lounge and Bar and accused Giovanni of being the licence holder ‘in name only’.
The police wrote: “The incident that took place outside Ricco Lounge on the 13 October 2024 was incredibly serious and this cannot be understated.
“The police submit the incident took place as a direct result of the premises’ failure to act on information known to them about the presence of firearms.
“This was compounded by the poor and inadequate searches undertaken, the failure to scan all customers’ ID and the complete failure to identify obvious risks surrounding the event and the persons attending.”
They said the venue’s intention to replace Giovanni with Mr Gilani as the licence holder was ‘wholly unacceptable’ and had lost confidence in management’s ability to meet licensing objectives.
The Met said the disorder took place outside the club on Russell Gardens at 3.55am after an altercation involving those believed to be customers at the venue. The force says things quickly escalated to ‘the discharge of multiple firearms by multiple people’.
A police report said shots were fired across the street in both directions and that dozens of onlookers took ‘evasive action’ to get out of the way.
David Nevitt, the health and safety consultant hired by Kensington and Chelsea Council to monitor the venue following complaints, also spoke of hearing sounds similar to gunshots or firecrackers and crouched behind a car.
Kensington and Chelsea Council will meet on Monday, November 25, to consider the Met’s application.
