MIDDLETOWN, Ohio -- A 64-year-old man is accused of running a bar out of a home for years.
Frederick Jackson Jr. was charged of illegal sale of liquor and drug abuse. He had alcohol, soda and snacks up for sale inside the Grove Street home, Middletown police said.
"There's tables and chairs, there's a bar to sit at," neighbor Lisa Anspach said. "It looks like a house on the outside, but when you go inside, it's tables and chairs like a bar."
The main problem, according to some neighbors, was all the traffic generated by the business.
"There is a lot of little kids around here, and my grandchildren stay with me sometimes, and it's just too much traffic on these little streets back here, and I just don't think it should be going in their house," Anspach said.
Others defended the establishment as a neighborhood staple.
"I get water because that's what I drink, and I get it free," Lourdes Medinas said. "My son go there too, and he drink pop free. The food, sometimes they collect money and they make a barbecue outside."
Medinas said the bar would close around 8:30 p.m. and that there were never noise problems.
Middletown police confiscated the alcohol when they shut down the bar Friday night. Several customers were arrested on bench warrants, and police said they also found cocaine inside the property.
The home's windows were boarded up Wednesday, along with steel bars on the front door and security lights. No one answered the front door; Jackson lives at a home on Ohio Avenue.
Jackson is scheduled for a pre-trial hearing Dec. 2.
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Rick McCrabb of the Journal-News contributed to this report.
