One of the founders behind a fiercely loved Tampa Bay brewery with numerous national awards is accused of battering a former girlfriend. According to the Tampa Bay Times, Justin Stange — who established Dunedin’s 7venth Sun Brewery with co-founder Devon Kreps in 2012, then helped expand the brewery to Tampa’s Seminole Heights last year — has been charged with misdemeanor battery.
In an interview with the Times, Kreps said that she was also abused by Stange when they were dating and “is seeking to sever business ties with him while keeping the popular breweries open.”
Stange told the Times on Monday that he entered a therapy program “right away.”
Citing a Tampa police report, the Times wrote that Stange’s battery charge — filed by prosecutors earlier this month — came after an incident on June 3. The woman involved, an ex-girlfriend, went to the police the following day, when the officer on scene “wrote that the woman said Stange punched her three to four times with a closed fist in the early hours of June 3.”
The local newspaper hasn’t named the woman who filed the report “because of the nature of the allegations” — and rightly so.
“A lot of people have reached out to me in their support to me and also to (the victim),” Kreps told the Times. “Obviously, they’re outraged at these allegations with good reason. The brewery community is aware of what’s happened. When this came to light we moved immediately to begin the process of removing him from the business.”
The article went onto say that the current battery charge isn’t a first for Stange, who “has faced charges of domestic battery in the past” and has never been convicted.
Kreps told the Times that Stange should be punished for what he did, but advised against boycotting 7venth Sun. Doing so, she said, “hurts the victims and all the amazing people who work for the company and put their hearts and souls into it.”
This article appears in Aug 23-30, 2018.