ATLANTA – It was a dinner that ended before it began with flipped tables, spilled cocktails and potentially deadly gunshots.
Stephen Rios, of Braselton, Ga., was inside JCT Kitchen, located at 1198 Howell Mill Road, with his wife and friends when the shooting started Monday night just before 9 p.m.
Rios is a regular patron to the restaurant and often recommends the popular, West Midtown eatery to out-of-towners.
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Sitting in the far-back corner of the bustling restaurant next to the kitchen, he waits on his wife and friends to join him as bartenders shake drinks and servers present plates of food to nearby tables. It’s a full house with about 30 late-night dinner patrons.
The frantic scene begins to unfold before his eyes.
In a swift, simultaneous explosion, a gunshot and a blood-curdling scream reverberate throughout the restaurant.
“I heard, what almost sounded like a wooden table being picked up and slammed on the ground—not loud enough to be… that I considered a gunshot.”
Two men at the table next to his look over, in a silent nod, they all agree to have heard the loud noise. Seconds later, they hear it again.
It’s louder.
And then another—even louder.
“That’s when, sort of, everything started to get chaotic. You started then to hear gunshots inside the restaurant.”
Everyone starts screaming.
“Get on the ground! Get on the ground!”
Tables fly through the air, drinks spills, food hits the ground.
“I did not see any person. I just heard the shots,” he said referring to the shooter.
Rios and his friends remain low to the ground. Rios is next to the exterior wall, covered in curtains. He slides open the drapes, looking for a chance to escape. There is not.
Laying on top of his wife, they stay perfectly still for the next 45 seconds—what seems like an eternity.
Concerned, he keeps his head up and peers down the center of the restaurant in an effort to catch sight of the shooter.
“I was just trying to look, if I saw anyone coming down the restaurant, whether they were looking, shooting indiscriminately, shooting at people around—that was just my fear; if that happened, I knew we needed to run.”
Once the disarray settles momentarily, Rios and his friends dart into the kitchen.
It seems empty, until he spots a female employee poke her head out from around the far-back corner. That’s where he and his friends frantically run to, and there they find the remaining kitchen staff.
Employees in the kitchen are shoving stuff out from under the tables—crawling underneath the cook stations, prep tables to hide.
One man attempts to run out the kitchen door, but is stopped by others who express grave concern regarding the unknown whereabouts of the shooter.
A few moments later, the chaos simmers, and Rios returns to the dining room to find his wife’s friend who had gone to the bathroom just prior to the violent eruption. She had locked herself inside during the scuffle.
While rescuing her, he notices several employees moving about the restaurant more freely.
However, most of the restaurant’s patrons are still huddled together on the floor, lying on the ground, hiding under tables that have been flipped over, leaning against their seats along the wall.
Rios sees a man who is hysterical, yelling at his family, urging and pleading with them to run. His wife calms him down.
There is a father holding a 14-year-old who’s uncontrollably screaming.
“It was just irrational… completely hysterical,” Rios said.
Atlanta Police officers respond to a shots-fired call. As units are en route to the location, the call is upgraded to a person shot, with a possible shooter still inside.
They arrive on the scene after about 10 minutes after the shooting started, Rios recalled.
Once there, they begin asking questions and allowing those who did not see anything to leave the restaurant. However, to exit, Rios and his friends have to go around to the side where there were steps—but not the front.
An officer leads them through the restaurant, with a flashlight in hand, seemingly scouring for any pertinent evidence on the ground along the way. But, once they approach the steps, the officer halts, preventing them from proceeding and directs them around a large area.
It’s a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs.
“It was my understanding that the victim took off running when he got shot and ran outside,” Rios said.
Once Rios, his wife and friends make it outside, they walk around to the front and see the ambulance—where the shot victim, Bruno Bafico, is being loaded for transport.
According to the APD, Bafico, 25, and his wife were in the parking lot getting ready to go into JCT Kitchen for dinner.
As Bafico exited his car, a slim, black male with a grey hoodie pulled over his head approached him with a gun and demanded his watch. Bafico refused and a struggle with the suspect ensued.
The suspect started firing several rounds at Bafico as he bolted inside the restaurant.
The robber followed suit, continuing to fire his gun—shooting at least twice more inside the packed restaurant.
Bafico stumbled over a cooler behind the bar. The suspect stood over him, attempting to shoot him while Bafico lied helpless on the ground, however, the suspect's gun jammed or malfunctioned.
The suspect fled the scene after hopping into the backseat of a newer-model, black Jeep or SUV. The driver was described as a Hispanic male or black male with a light complexion and long, wavy hair.
Bafico was rushed to Grady Memorial Hospital in critical, but stable condition, for injuries to his stomach and thigh. He was reportedly alert, conscious and breathing—and later underwent surgery.
“I’m just thankful it wasn’t a worse-case scenario. With everything going on in the news, you see the mass shootings. I think that was my initial fear of what was occurring, and how to handle that situation…” Rios said. “…And that more people were not hurt.”
JCT Kitchen’s management, Ford Fry Restaurants, released the following statement Tuesday:
"We are working diligently with APD, the property security team and city inspectors as they investigate what is believed to be a targeted, isolated act intended for robbery, with the victim having come to the restaurant after shopping in Buckhead. The security and well-being of our guests and employees are always our first priority: We have off-duty APD officers present at the restaurant in addition to 24-hour security on-property at Westside Provisions District. We are saddened by this unforeseen circumstance and will continue to support all involved with the investigation to remain a safe environment."
The investigation is ongoing.
