Two men killed outside Tucson gay bar in suspected hate crime

Gunman carried a list of LGBTQ+ venues before shooting Vincent Siqueiros and Cameron Capara in the Venture-N parking lot.

Told by Claire Lawson · 1 September 2026

The Venture-N is the kind of place people call the Denture-N because most of the regulars have been going there long enough to need them. It's a neighbourhood dive bar full of friends who happen to be gay, the sort of spot where everyone knows everyone and has done for years. Monday morning, two of them were dead.

Vincent Anthony Siqueiros, 42, and Cameron Davis Capara, 33, were shot in the bar's parking lot just after midnight. The gunman, Ousman Ceesay, 44, walked inside bleeding from a wound near his armpit and collapsed. Patrons rushed to help — one 75-year-old man held Ceesay's head as others tried to stop the bleeding. He died within a minute. None of them knew yet that he'd just killed two people outside.

Tucson police are investigating the shooting as a hate crime. Ceesay was carrying a note listing several LGBTQ+ businesses. Chief Monica Prieto called bias-based crimes "especially heinous" and said the department would increase patrols around queer venues and coordinate with community organisations. The words are correct and they do not fix anything.

Alan Clark stopped by the Venture-N on Monday morning wearing a Venture-N T-shirt. He'd already been texting the brotherhood of regulars all morning — finding out who was lost, who was there, who was safe. He was already thinking hate crime before police said it out loud, because of course he was. "Right after Pulse happened, I remember coming here and all of us were shaken up by that," he said, naming the 2016 Orlando nightclub massacre that killed 49 people. "And it was a matter of, you know, keep in touch with each other, check in, we are a community. We all want to make sure that we're there for each other."

That was eight years ago and here we are again. A quiet Monday night. Ten people in the bar. Then gunshots.

The 75-year-old who held Ceesay's head asked not to be named for security reasons, which tells you everything about what it means to be identifiable as a regular at a gay bar right now. He said he'd never seen anything like it in his life. He will see it every time he closes his eyes for the rest of it.