An octogenarian who has long terrorized the swath of St. Louis Hills around St. Raphael will have to pay a former tenant and a neighbor $120,000.
On Friday, a judge found Roland Clubb liable for assaulting Paul Beffa and Carolyn Mueller—a tenant of Clubb’s and a neighbor of the rental property, respectively. Clubb was also found to have wrongfully evicted Beffa, who is also the owner of Beffa’s Bar & Restaurant in Downtown West.
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Beffa rented a home from Clubb along Jamieson Avenue in June of 2023. The landlord-tenant relationship quickly went awry. Clubb built a makeshift wall down the middle of the property’s driveway, preventing Beffa from accessing his garage. When Beffa complained about the wall, Clubb told him if he didn’t like it he could move out. Clubb then told Beffa, “Get ready for a fucking whirlwind buddy,” put up a “for lease” sign in front of the residence and soon removed a portion of Beffa’s air conditioning unit amid 90-degree heat.
Later, as Beffa was in the process of moving his things out of the house, Clubb approached Beffa and waved a gun at him. (Beffa managed to snap a photo of Clubb with his gun tucked into his pants, its handle showing, prior to the 82-year-old bandying it about.)
Enter Mueller, the neighbor. She accused Clubb of verbally antagonizing her and attempting to run her over as she crossed Jamieson. Clubb put his truck in reverse and accelerated, causing Mueller to have to jump out of the way.
Mueller and Beffa then jointly sued Clubb, which led to a trial before Judge Rochelle Woodiest in January. On Friday, she ordered that Clubb must pay Mueller $45,000 and Beffa $75,000.
All this went down a stone’s throw away from St Raphael the Archangel Church. In November, Clubb pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault for trying to run over a church maintenance worker who took Clubb to task for dumping his trash in the church’s bins. He was given probation.
Clubb is due back in court at the end of this month on a different assault charge, also occurring in that same swath of Jamieson, in which Clubb is accused of standing in the back of his pick up truck and hitting a woman with “a piece of vinyl or aluminum” as she walked by on the sidewalk.
Editor’s note: The original version of this story misstated an allegation in the fourth paragraph as being made against Beffa. It was made against Clubb. We regret the error.