By Joseph Deaux
Music from Branded Saloon funnels from the bar into Vanderbilt Avenue, where Chai Eun Hillmann died nearly two weeks ago. A giant moose head hangs above the kitchen window. There are Texas longhorns above the cash register and two massive, wooden wheels hover over the bar. The Spice Girls play, incongruously. The bartender, Chris Young, grooves to the song and patrons bob their heads.
On September 30, Hillmann lay on the bar, bleeding to death. But now the bartender opens a bottle of champagne. The cork explodes and hits the ceiling. Chatter in the bar hushes and the bartender smiles broadly and shouts, “Mazel tov!” Cheers reverberate throughout the establishment.
The Branded Saloon is returning to life.
Hillmann was stabbed in a fight about a dog. Police told reporters that Daniel Pagan, 36, was at the bar with his wife and dog. He tied his dog’s leash at the bar near Hillmann’s dog. Their leashes became entangled and they began skirmishing. Hillmann, who was in the back playing charity poker, emerged to see what was happening. So too did Pagan. Witnesses say Hillmann and Pagan started arguing. The argument spilled out into the street where, police said, Pagan allegedly pulled a knife. Daniel Hultquist, the bartender working that night, ran out to try and calm Pagan down.
“I guess I came off as too threatening,” Hultquist says because Pagan then turned and allegedly stabbed him in the neck. Police said that Pagan stabbed Hillmann multiple times. Before an ambulance arrived to the scene, Hultquist says Hillmann was lying in the street bleeding, so he picked him up and brought him into the bar. “Chai didn’t say anything,” Hultquist says. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Kings County Hospital. Pagan was arrested by authorities and charged with murder and attempted murder.
Chris Young began working at Branded Saloon three weeks ago. He met Hillmann the night before his death.
“Chai was a pain in the ass. I mean, you know he was,” he says. “For me I was more sad. I mean, I don’t know. I couldn’t believe it—this neighborhood.”
Hultquist says that he and Hillmann were good friends. Even though they only worked together since the bar opened on Memorial Day weekend, he says that friendship with co-workers “kind of grows in dog years.” He says he looked out for Hillmann the way Hillmann did for him. “We all look after each other,” he says. Hultquist needed 20 stitches from the stab wound.
A few days after his death, the bar held a vigil to remember Hillmann. People who attended say the event was moving.
“Everyone is just okay with everyone else,” Young says. “I would have wanted that kind of send off,” Young says. Hultquist says that since Hillmann’s death everybody is a bit closer. He stares at the counter.
“I don’t know. I feel a bit selfish or relieved that I’m still alive,” he says.
He pours himself a drink. The regulars are cackling about obscene gestures and provocative jokes. People play poker in the back. The cook is giggling through his kitchen window.
Outside, Hultquist extinguishes his cigarette and quietly retires to the bar, leaving the topic of Hillmann’s death for the others standing outside to discuss. He already lived it.
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