The staff at Flix Brewhouse had to confront a gunman on Friday night, a frightening situation that thankfully ended without any shots being fired, as first reported by KOAT and later by the Albuquerque Journal.

At approximately 11 p.m. on Friday, Darnell Hill walked into Flix with a loaded AR-15-style rifle. He went around the bar and into the kitchen. While some staff members ran away or tried to hide, others confronted Hill, ultimately wrestling the gun away from him and detaining him until Bernalillo County Sheriff’s deputies arrived.

Deputies reported that Hill appeared to be intoxicated.

Hill, 26, was booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center on charges of bringing a firearm into a licensed liquor establishment, and negligent use of a firearm. He will be arraigned at some point this week.

This is the second time, that we can recall, where someone entered a local brewery with a gun. Back in June 2019, an armed man was shot and killed by an off-duty FBI agent at Nexus Brewery. That armed man was the ex-boyfriend of another FBI agent who was having dinner at the brewery. No one else was injured that night.

Flix only issued a statement, included in the KOAT story, and did not make any staff available for interviews. The company will provide counseling for anyone traumatized by the events on Friday.

We will share any further updates about this story should we receive any, and we can only say that we are thankful that no staff members nor customers were physically hurt during this incident.

— Stoutmeister