James E. Troxel is barely discernible on Iguana Cantina's crowded dance floor, lost amid a mass of drunken patrons gyrating to thundering music under pulsating lights. One moment, he's there, the next moment he vanishes, swallowed by the crowd without missing a beat.
Thirty seconds later, one of 14 club surveillance cameras shows two yellow-jacketed security guards pushing through the throng to reach the young man who by now is on the floor and can't be seen on the video. All you can see are the guards bending over, the man's stunned friends watching while others dance around them as if nothing had happened.
Police said Troxel - who was 20 and in the club for an 18-and-over night - suffered a severe head injury and remains at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, unable to remember what happened to him and struggling to recite the alphabet.
How he was injured remains in dispute, his predicament thrust into public view when Baltimore's police commissioner used the case as one reason for banning off-duty officers from working overtime at bars. At least a dozen cops were outside the nightclub on Market Place Sept. 26 when Troxel was injured inside.
Frederick H. Bealefeld III told a City Council luncheon that it's unacceptable "when people wind up in a coma in a club that I have cops working secondary at and no one knows anything."
Iguana Cantina's attorney and husband of a license holder, a former city police officer, are complaining that the commissioner made it seem like police watched a nearly deadly brawl but did nothing to stop it or make arrests.
"I'm not sure how he got injured," said David Adams, whose wife, Cheryl, is part-owner. "I don't see an altercation like the one that's being described."
The club's lawyer, James J. Temple Jr., said he's heard several stories - that members of two rival Towson fraternities were arguing, that the victim grabbed a woman and was pushed by her friend, or that the man slipped and hit his head on the concrete dance floor.
"It's all rumor," he said.
The videotape given to The Baltimore Sun begins around 12:30 on a Friday morning as the bar is packed with 700 people. Most are dancing, wildly waving their hands in the air or shouting to be heard above the music.
At 12:33 a.m., in the bottom left corner of the screen, a man in a white shirt suddenly drops from view. It's hard to see, but it doesn't appear there was any commotion. People don't stop dancing. Drinks don't go flying. The crowd doesn't part. And even after security guards arrive, a male bartender picks up a female bartender and playfully cradles her in his arms.
