Linda Carter, the attorney for Thirsty Turtle co-owner Alan Wanuck, told the county liquor board at a meeting last night that Wanuck was not willing to risk mistakes being made.

HYATTSVILLE – The Thirsty Turtle permanently surrendered its liquor license yesterday afternoon, effective immediately, cutting short what could have been a two-year legal battle and closing down the bar nearly two weeks before the county required it to.

A week after the Prince George’s County Board of License Commissioners revoked the establishment’s license for allegedly serving two underage patrons earlier this semester, Turtle submitted a three-page letter saying the bar’s co-owner, Alan Wanuck, no longer trusted anyone else to help him prevent illegal activity and couldn’t run the bar on his own.

“Alan and I have a spent a lot of time together, and he just decided he wasn’t willing to have any mistakes. … Alan can’t be at the door 24/7,” Linda Carter, Turtle’s attorney, said in an interview. “At this point, he’s got to examine all of his options.”

The doors are shuttered until all the alcohol leaves the location, and the establishment’s future is still uncertain, Carter said. Wanuck himself did not attend a liquor board meeting last night to discuss the location’s future.

The beer and wine may be transferred to Wanuck’s other establishment, Alario’s Pizzeria, and the liquor could be disposed of. Tuesday night, at least one bartender poured some liquor on patrons’ heads, which gave some students a clue they might have been witnessing Turtle’s unofficial goodbye party.

For one of the first times since the Oct. 12 quadruple stabbing involving nearly a dozen people believed to be patrons at Turtle, the bar was hopping Tuesday night, according to senior landscape architecture major Emily Yandoli.

“The energy was definitely better than it’s been in a few weeks,” Yandoli said, adding: “I’m morbidly depressed.”

Turtle’s letter to the liquor board described the assertions police made to the media about last month’s stabbing as “inflammatory and highly inaccurate.”

The stabbings were “completely blown out of proportion,” Carter said, and if they had been discussed at yesterday’s hearing, she said she is confident her client would have prevailed if the liquor license’s revocation had been appealed to the Prince George’s County Circuit Court.

Carter said video footage of an altercation that began inside the bar shows security officers breaking up the dispute within 13 seconds and sending fighters out in different directions down Route 1, and she said it was unclear whether they were actually drunk. The knives came out only when the group had crossed Route 1, outside Cornerstone Grill and Loft, she said.

The letter further criticized depictions of Turtle as merely a place to get drunk — the establishment sells 650 burgers and 1,500 pounds of chicken per week, it said.

“The Turtle has become known as a spot where people go to eat and socialize,” the letter said.

The letter also described the admittance of two underage student police aids in a Sept. 23 undercover operation as an error; Wanuck later fired the bouncer who let them in.

“At the end of the day, Alan lives in College Park; he doesn’t want to do anything detrimental to his community, and his employees have made mistakes,” Carter said. “He has gotten to the point where he doesn’t trust anyone.”

At last night’s liquor board meeting, police officials said they hoped whatever business operates in Turtle’s space — either a dry Turtle or another establishment — is more attentive to the law.

“Here’s what I will be expecting: I will expect that the proprietor at the location of the previous Thirsty Turtle will obey the law,” University Police Chief David Mitchell said. “I would hope that when the future moves on the next proprietor will conduct themselves appropriately and that this would be the end of a public nuisance.”

Mitchell has said previously that Turtle added to the problem of underage drinking in the city and should be “padlocked.” University Police handed out an information packet that included 25 incidents of intoxication reported at dorms in which students said they had been drinking at Turtle.

“19 year old student urinated in the hallway while intoxicated- later told the RA he did not know what he was doing or remember details because it was ‘dollar pitcher night at Turtle,'” read one report. In another instance, an underage student approached his front desk to say “he did not remember what floor he lived on.”

“Hopefully we can work together that this type of situation is a thing of the past,” liquor board chairman Franklin Jackson told police at last night’s meeting.

Staff writer Ben Present contributed to this report. roubein at umdbk dot com