Closed bar to donate liquor license funds stabbing victim’s family

A downtown Boston bar outside of where a Marine visiting from Chicago was fatally stabbed has closed for good, and the owners say they’re donating funds earned from their liquor license to the victim’s family. 

Carolyn M. Conway, an attorney representing the owners of the former Sons of Boston bar, told the city’s Licensing Board Tuesday that the bar owners had “entered into an agreement” with the landlord of the property, who is reportedly buying the license from the owners. The money earned from their full liquor license — which can sell as high as $600,000 on the private market in Boston due to the stringent laws that limit licenses — will then go to the family of Daniel Martinez, the 23-year-old Marine stabbed by Sons of Boston bouncer Alvaro Larrama.

The Aug. 6 meeting was supposed to go over a separate premise violation, one over assault and battery that allegedly occurred in June. However Conway said she wasn’t prepared to speak about the violation. The board then informed her she would have to come back to another violation hearing before discussing the transaction of the liquor license.

“Should there be a violation found here, the violation stays with the license,” Kathleen Joyce, the board chairwoman, said to Conway. “It’s not something that can be erased by the sale. This was very serious.”

The deadly stabbing dates back to St. Patrick’s Day weekend in 2022, when Martinez was on vacation in Boston. Larrama wouldn’t let Martinez and his friend into the bar; an altercation ensued before Larrama pulled out a knife and stabbed Martinez twice, authorities said.

The bouncer discarded the knife and clothes at the bar and escaped out of the back exit. Authorities said a co-owner of the bar, Alisha Dumeer, helped him avoid authorities and pleaded guilty to an accessory charge in late 2023.

This year in April Larrama was sentenced to 17 to 20 years after pleading guilty to manslaughter.

The bar in 2023 reopened as “Loyal Nine” under the same ownership, but it isn’t immediately clear when the bar shuttered again.