Nightclub Owner Pleads Guilty to Unlawful Wounding for Shooting Woman in Parking Lot After Ejecting Her from Bar in 2023

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Alan Bruce Phillips, 64, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to felony unlawful wounding for, in 2023, shooting a woman who had charged at Mr. Phillips outside the bar he owns after he told the woman and her group of friends to leave for not settling a tab. The Virginia Beach Circuit Court appointed the Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office as special prosecutors in the case last year, because an employee of the Virginia Beach Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office was a potential trial witness.

Mr. Phillips is the owner of The Rainbow Cactus Company, which operates a bar and nightclub on South Lynnhaven Road in Virginia Beach. In the early morning hours of Nov. 3, 2023, the victim was in a group of people having a night out at The Rainbow Cactus. Mr. Phillips had just asked the victim and her friends to leave the premises after a dispute at the bar regarding one of their open tabs, and he waited in the parking lot area for the women to leave. Video camera footage showed the victim throwing food and drinks at Mr. Phillips and then charging at Mr. Phillips, at which point Mr. Phillips pulled out a gun, fired once, and shot the victim in her leg.

A nearby Virginia Beach Police patrol officer heard the gunshot and responded to the parking lot, where other patrons had gathered and pointed out Mr. Phillips as the shooter. Another woman attempted to charge at Mr. Phillips and had to be restrained by officers, and the victim tried to fight both that woman and another woman before being restrained as well. Officers rendered aid to the victim until medics arrived and transported her to a hospital for further treatment of her non-life-threatening wound. Based on their investigation, police secured charges against Mr. Phillips for malicious wounding and using a firearm in the commission of that felony.

After reviewing the evidence and determining that the victim was the initial aggressor in this incident, the Commonwealth offered for Mr. Phillips to plead guilty to the lesser felony charge of unlawful wounding, and Mr. Phillips accepted. The agreement called for the accompanying charge of using a firearm in the commission of malicious wounding to be withdrawn, and there is no agreement as to Mr. Phillips’s sentence. On Tuesday, Virginia Beach Circuit Court Judge Afshin Farashahi took Mr. Phillips’s guilty plea and continued the case for sentencing on Jan. 28, 2026. The sentencing judge will then determine whether to accept the plea agreement and what sentence to impose.

“While the victim was in the wrong to charge at — and therefore threaten to batter — Mr. Phillips, Mr. Phillips responded to that non-deadly force with deadly force by shooting the victim, which is the textbook definition of unlawful wounding,” said Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi. “Had Mr. Phillips used non-deadly force to repel the victim, he would have committed no crime, but by using deadly force — and by thereby abusing his gun rights — he did. At sentencing, we will recommend a sentence that reflects the seriousness of Mr. Phillips’s actions.”

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Anthony J. Comento is prosecuting Mr. Phillips’s case, and Virginia Beach Police Detective Julia K. Heward led the investigation.

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