Until now, Club Space, the last place tourist Paula Sladewski was seen alive before turning up dead in a burning dumpster, has remained relatively silent about the case.
That changed after Kevin Klym, Sladewski's boyfriend, went on the Today show last week and said the recently released sketch of the man last seen with Paula looked like a bouncer at Space and placed a good portion of blame on the nightclub.
Now owner Louis Puig is defending his establishment and his employees.
"The man who Paula Sladewski was last seen with outside of Club Space was not inside Club Space and was not a customer or an employee of Club Space," Puig wrote in an email to Riptide. "He was an Afro-American male whom three Club Space employees saw walk up to Paula on the street in front of our club. He engaged Paula in a conversation and then walked away with her. If he were one of our employees, the police would have come by to pick him up a long time ago."
Puig also denies the man in the sketch looks anything like one of his employees.
"The man seen on the surveillance video escorting Paula is the same man who escorted Paula's boyfriend out for fighting with her. He is our front doorman, or as Paula's boyfriend calls him, 'a bouncer.' He is white and has no facial hair and looks nothing like the man in the sketch.
"It is a shame that this guy is trying to pass the blame for abandoning his girlfriend at a club after fighting with her," Puig continues. "Last week, he was blaming the City of Miami. Who will he blame next?"
