Late into the evening on February 9, a man was stabbed by one of the security guards posted at West Charlotte’s Woodshed Bar.
Just before midnight, officers responded to a call about a stabbing from the LGBTQ+ bar on Queen City Drive. When they arrived, they found a 30-year-old man with serious knife wounds. The victim, identified as Rod Jackson, was taken to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries, per one of the medics familiar with the incident.
Court paperwork and a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department police report confirmed the perpetrator to be 34-year-old Christopher Harris.
Jackson said things started as a verbal argument between him and Harris. The bar was crowded and Harris told him to get out of the way, the victim told WSOC of the incident. “He was like, ‘You can leave,’ and I was like, ‘I’m not going nowhere. We just paid for a drink,’” Jackson said. Things turned physical as tensions escalated, and the two were separated.
Witnesses said other bar employees escorted Harris outside. Jackson believes someone let Harris back in through another door. “As soon as I touched the door, he was back inside at the door,” Jackson said. “He just went to stabbing me.”
Found by the medical staff tending to the victim, Jackson had two deep cuts in the torso. “She said if he would have probably got a little deeper, I probably could have bled to death,” Jackson told reporters from his hospital bed. “It did get my large intestine so they had to cut my stomach open.”
After the incident, the owner of The Woodshed, Timothy Lee, said he reached out to Jackson to offer any support possible to the victim.
Lee said Harris was contracted through a third party. The owner also said he does not hire armed security so Harris should not have had a weapon, as security on the premises’ only responsibility was to wand people and maybe conduct the occasional pat down to keep weapons like a knife out.
Jackson said he couldn’t understand why Harris allegedly got so irate and violent.“I’ve never had an issue with him, me and him never exchanged words,” Jackson said. “From what I’m hearing, he’s had numerous altercations with people to where people have reported that he’s real hostile.”
Harris is currently being held at the Mecklenburg County jail under no bond.
