The owner of a Virginia Beach nightclub has pleaded guilty to felony unlawful wounding after shooting a woman outside his business last year during a late-night altercation.
On Tuesday, 64-year-old Alan Bruce Phillips, who owns The Rainbow Cactus Company on South Lynnhaven Road, entered the plea in Virginia Beach Circuit Court. The charge stems from a shooting that happened in the early morning hours of November 3, 2023.
According to prosecutors, the incident began when Phillips asked a group of women to leave his nightclub after a dispute over an unpaid tab. Surveillance footage shows that once outside, one of the women threw food and drinks at Phillips and then charged at him in the parking lot. That’s when Phillips pulled out a gun and shot the woman in the leg.
A nearby Virginia Beach police officer heard the gunfire and rushed to the scene. By the time he arrived, several patrons had gathered and pointed out Phillips as the shooter. The situation remained tense — another woman tried to go after Phillips and had to be held back by officers. The shooting victim also attempted to fight two other women before being restrained.
Police provided aid to the injured woman until medics arrived. She was taken to a hospital for treatment of what were described as non-life-threatening injuries. Phillips was arrested and initially charged with malicious wounding and using a firearm in the commission of a felony.
But after reviewing surveillance footage and accounts from the scene, the special prosecutors — brought in from Norfolk due to a conflict with the local prosecutor’s office — determined that the woman was the initial aggressor. Still, they said Phillips crossed a legal line by using a gun in response to non-lethal force.
“While the victim was in the wrong to charge at — and therefore threaten to batter — Mr. Phillips, Mr. Phillips responded to that non-deadly force with deadly force by shooting the victim, which is the textbook definition of unlawful wounding,” said Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi. “Had Mr. Phillips used non-deadly force to repel the victim, he would have committed no crime, but by using deadly force — and by thereby abusing his gun rights — he did.”
Phillips took a plea deal to a lesser charge of unlawful wounding. In return, prosecutors dropped the firearm charge. There’s no agreement on his sentence — that decision now lies with Judge Afshin Farashahi, who set sentencing for January 28, 2026.
Fatehi said his office will recommend a sentence that reflects “the seriousness of Mr. Phillips’s actions.”