Cody Fisher stabbing: Birmingham nightclub may be forced to close

The nightclub where a 23-year-old footballer died in a knife attack may be forced to close.

Birmingham City Council will hold an urgent meeting on Friday after police said there had been “serious management failings” at the Crane nightclub.

The West Midlands force said Cody Fisher had died during “a fight on the dance floor” and officers had then faced “a scene of chaos and drug use”.

The management of the Digbeth club said they were cooperating with authorities.

One sergeant’s account said the club’s security guards had asked officers to help them with crowd control following the stabbing, while other “oblivious” staff members were “wandering around all over the place” and began cleaning up the crime scene.

A police van outside The Crane nightclub

“They have started to clean the dance floor further down from where the deceased was; officers shouted at them to stop,” the sergeant said.

“While officers are doing CPR, you can see people are just wandering around in the scene freely. As soon as we had more officers on the scene they were removed and the whole dance floor was cordoned off and the area was made sterile.

“There were hundreds of small drugs bags and nitrous oxide canisters all over the dance floor. These include the small and the very large nitrous oxide canisters with balloons.”

Licensing officers will ask for immediate measures to be implemented to ensure public safety and will examine whether the club should be stripped of its permission to sell alcohol and whether the supervisor should be removed.

Crane previously expressed condolences for Mr Fisher’s family and cancelled its New Year’s Eve event out of respect for them.

Responding to a review of its licence on Thursday, a spokesperson for Crane added: “An expedited review of a premises licence is normal whenever any serious crime takes place at a licensed premises, and we are cooperating fully.

“We place the highest priority on all aspects of public safety and security.

“Whilst it would be wrong for us at this stage to react to individual, anecdotal accounts of the circumstances that applied on Boxing Day, we do employ extensive and professional security procedures for all public events, and our contracted security staff are professionals who are licensed by the SIA [Security Industry Authority].

“But we will of course be conducting a full and detailed review in light of this week’s tragedy, as well as assisting fully with the ongoing police inquiry.”

Officers said they had arrested a 22-year-old man in London at about 03:00 GMT on Thursday in connection with the stabbing.

He is the third person to be arrested on suspicion of murdering Mr Fisher, a left-back who played for non-league Midlands clubs including Bromsgrove Sporting, Stourbridge and Stratford Town. The sportsman also worked as a coach at a school in Redditch, Worcestershire.

Four others have been arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender.

Police recovered a knife from the crime scene and a post-mortem examination has confirmed Mr Fisher died of a stab wound.