Brian Tyner, 38, was convicted Wednesday of first-degree murder for fatally shooting Bluthenthal on August 3, 2025, during an encounter in a third-floor hallway of the sprawling Theatre Box building at 701 Fifth Avenue. Jurors also convicted Tyner of carrying a concealed firearm and brandishing a firearm, and he is scheduled to be sentenced in November.
The verdict follows a trial in which surveillance footage provided jurors with a disturbing, unusually detailed view of the moments preceding Bluthenthal's death. Prosecutors said Tyner and two women had spent hours drinking at one of the businesses inside the building before Tyner, who appeared agitated, encountered Bluthenthal in the hallway.
According to prosecutors, Tyner tapped Bluthenthal on the back as he passed. Bluthenthal raised an arm to prevent Tyner from advancing, Tyner knocked the arm away and Bluthenthal punched him before turning and walking away. Tyner then retrieved a handgun from a cross-body satchel, followed Bluthenthal and shot him. Bluthenthal died at the scene.
Surveillance footage played during the trial showed Tyner searching for the firearm in his satchel before the weapon fell onto the ground. Prosecutors argued that he picked it up and ultimately fired into Bluthenthal's heart, while Tyner's defense maintained that Bluthenthal had been the aggressor and urged jurors to scrutinize the video repeatedly.
Tyner had also told investigators a substantially different version of the confrontation. He claimed the two men accidentally bumped into each other, that Bluthenthal became angry, punched him and put his hands around his neck, and that he fired in self-defense. The jury rejected that defense and returned a first-degree murder verdict.
Bluthenthal, who also went by Antwan Eugene Blu, was a Navy veteran, respiratory therapist for the Department of Veterans Affairs, husband and father to a baby girl who was only about four months old when he died. He had apparently been making his way through the building to meet his wife when his path crossed with a man he did not know. Early reporting on the case likewise indicated the men were strangers.
The conviction determines Tyner's criminal responsibility for the killing, but it does not resolve a separate and much broader legal question that has hovered over the case for the past year: whether the businesses and property owners controlling 701 Fifth Avenue bear some civil responsibility for allowing an armed and allegedly intoxicated patron to move through the building in the first place.
Bluthenthal's young daughter subsequently filed a wrongful death lawsuit against an array of companies associated with Theatre Box, including Cielo Rooftop Lounge operator Tequila Del Cielo LLC, National Lampoon Inc., Palmstar Media Inc., Tempo 5th Ave LLC and landlord 701 Fifth Ave. Properties LLC. The pending lawsuit alleges negligence and premises liability and argues that inadequate security measures contributed to Bluthenthal's death. Those allegations remain unproven.
The complaint alleges that businesses sharing the enormous building also shared hallways, elevators, stairwells and restrooms, creating cross-traffic between venues and requiring coordinated security. Among other things, the plaintiffs contend operators failed to employ sufficient security personnel, metal detectors, bag checks and crowd-control measures despite previous disturbances at the property. The criminal verdict therefore arrives as another milestone in the strange history of a building that was once supposed to transform entertainment in downtown San Diego.
Long before Theatre Box existed, 701 Fifth Avenue was itself a major bet on downtown's revival. Pacific Theatres constructed a $15 million, 15-screen Gaslamp megaplex at Fifth Avenue and G Street in 1997, during an era when large movie theaters were still viewed as anchors capable of drawing crowds into urban entertainment districts.
The cinema eventually operated as Reading Cinemas Gaslamp 15 before closing in February 2016. What followed was an extraordinarily ambitious attempt to reinvent the conventional multiplex for the Instagram and celebrity-branding era.
In December 2018, the building reopened as Theatre Box following a multimillion-dollar overhaul. The two-story, approximately 73,000-square-foot complex represented the first luxury dine-in cinema venture associated with Hollywood's legendary TCL Chinese Theatre and initially combined eight upscale movie auditoriums with Sugar Factory American Brasserie, a candy store, café and Chocolate Lounge.
The launch was deliberately theatrical. Pitbull attended the December 14 grand opening and participated in a Hollywood-style hand-and-footprint ceremony, while San Diego native Nick Cannon performed a DJ set. Celebrity handprints and footprints modeled after those at the TCL Chinese Theatre were installed in the lobby, and plans called for Cannon's enormous Wild 'N Out Sports Bar & Arcade and a rooftop nightlife venue.
The project was sold as much more than a movie theater. Early plans described nine bars and six food venues distributed throughout the complex, with more than 500 varieties of candy, oversized cocktails, luxury reclining cinema seats and an elaborate rooftop component.
Even that rooftop repeatedly changed identities. By summer 2019, Theatre Box opened 5th & Sky Rooftop Gardens & Lounge, a Japanese-garden-inspired venue with sushi, cocktails, fire pits and capacity for about 200 guests. Other celebrity-associated concepts followed over the years, including Nick Jonas and John Varvatos-backed Villa One Tequila Gardens.
The grand vision never achieved permanence. The COVID-19 pandemic devastated the movie-theater industry and further destabilized Theatre Box's already complicated combination of cinema, restaurants and nightlife. Concepts came and went, and by January 2023 the Theatre Box cinema itself, Sugar Factory and the roughly three-month-old Villa One Tequila Gardens had all closed. SanDiegoVille reported at the time that the much-hyped entertainment complex had effectively ended its original run after barely four years.
Rather than reverting to a conventional cinema or undergoing a wholesale redevelopment, the enormous building entered another reinvention. Restaurateur Jorge "Mr. Tempo" Cueva emerged as its next major operator following what was reported as an approximately $10 million makeover. Mr. Tempo Cantina became an anchor restaurant, Cielo occupied the rooftop, and a shifting collection of nightlife concepts - including Cowboy Cantina and a revival of famed 1990s Hollywood nightclub The Roxbury - attempted to turn the former cinema into a sprawling multi-level nightlife destination.
A National Lampoon-affiliated comedy venue known as The Yellow Door also operated inside Theatre Box in 2025, meaning the former multiplex had effectively become a maze of restaurants, bars, clubs and entertainment concepts using spaces originally designed around movie auditoriums and their common circulation areas. Public event listings confirm The Yellow Door was hosting comedy performances inside Theatre Box as late as August 2, 2025 - the day before Bluthenthal was killed.
Behind the branding, however, the building's operations were substantially more interconnected than the individual names suggested. As SanDiegoVille subsequently reported, Mr. Tempo Cantina, Cielo Rooftop Lounge, Cowboy Cantina and The Roxbury operated under one shared Type 47 liquor license. The arrangement meant regulatory trouble generated anywhere under the umbrella could jeopardize alcohol service throughout the building. By 2025, trouble was arriving from nearly every direction.
County health inspectors repeatedly ordered operations at the property closed over major vermin and sanitation violations. City inspections uncovered unpermitted construction. The Roxbury's heavily promoted revival lasted only a matter of weeks and was followed by allegations from former employees involving unpaid wages. Mr. Tempo became embroiled in a bitter landlord dispute.
Then came the August 3 killing. The shooting was not Theatre Box's first encounter with gunfire. SanDiegoVille previously reported that police descended on the complex in April 2021 after receiving reports of shots fired, ultimately finding shell casings on the rooftop but no shooting victim or suspect. The Bluthenthal homicide four years later was obviously far more consequential: this time, a patron was dead in one of the building's shared hallways.
Two months after Bluthenthal's death, the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and the previous license holder reached a settlement revoking the umbrella liquor license. ABC cited allegations involving nuisance conditions, a "disorderly house," repeated law-enforcement responses and unauthorized individuals participating in the operation of the business. SanDiegoVille previously reported that ABC confirmed the August homicide fell within the time period and conduct encompassed by two of the counts, although the shooting was not specifically identified in the formal accusation.
Alcohol service throughout the building was barred in November 2025. Mr. Tempo Cantina subsequently closed, joining the long list of Theatre Box concepts that arrived amid elaborate promotion only to disappear.
The business collapse exposed another layer of Theatre Box's story: the people behind the building. San Diego County property records reviewed previously by SanDiegoVille identified 701 Fifth Ave. Properties LLC as the property owner. The company is connected to Hollywood producer and entertainment entrepreneur Elie Samaha, whose interests include the TCL Chinese Theatre and Dolby Theatre in Hollywood and who was involved with Theatre Box from its original 2018 launch.
In February 2026, SanDiegoVille reported that a new liquor-license transfer finally placed Samaha and business partner Freddy Braidi directly into the regulatory picture. An application filed with ABC sought to transfer the troubled license to a new entity, 701 Fifth Avenue, LLC, listing Samaha as manager and member and Braidi as a member. At the time, both the old and proposed licenses remained pending and under indefinite suspension.
Samaha also broke his silence about the property's future, telling SanDiegoVille that ownership intended to attempt yet another resurrection of 701 Fifth Avenue. Plans he outlined included a San Diego location of Lebanese restaurant Laya, the return of Sugar Factory, an outpost of Downey steakhouse The LKSD, a Heaven on Sunset spa and, notably, the return of Tequila del Cielo - the rooftop operator named as a defendant in Bluthenthal's family's wrongful death lawsuit. Samaha emphasized at the time that the plans were works in progress and could change.
He also told SanDiegoVille that the landlord had acquired the building from developer Oliver McMillan in August 2023, clarified distinctions between the property-owning company and the former master tenant that held the liquor license, and disputed or qualified several characterizations surrounding the building's regulatory and business problems.
That proposed resurrection makes Wednesday's murder conviction particularly significant for the property's story. The criminal prosecution and the civil case ask fundamentally different questions: jurors in Tyner's trial were tasked with deciding whether he murdered Bluthenthal, while the pending wrongful death litigation concerns whether businesses and property interests also failed in duties they allegedly owed to patrons.
The first question now has an answer. Tyner stands convicted of first-degree murder, carrying a concealed firearm and brandishing a firearm. His sentencing is scheduled for November. The second question remains for another courtroom.
And hanging over both is the future of 701 Fifth Avenue itself, a building constructed nearly three decades ago as a $15 million movie palace, reinvented with Hollywood fanfare as Theatre Box, filled with celebrity-backed restaurants and clubs, hollowed out after repeated business failures, reborn as a nightlife complex, and ultimately thrust into a homicide investigation, liquor-license revocation and web of civil litigation.
Whether the latest plans finally revive the enormous Gaslamp property remains unclear. But Tyner's conviction permanently adds the murder of Antwan Bluthenthal to the history of an address whose repeated attempts at reinvention have increasingly been overshadowed by the circumstances of its demise.
Originally published on September 23, 2026.
