“They couldn’t believe what was happening.”

As customers dined and employees jostled to serve food and drinks, a City Winery dishwasher chased a server into the dining room and fatally stabbed him, prosecutors alleged Friday.

A Cook County judge ordered Clarence Johnson, 41, detained pending trial after prosecutors described what they called a shocking attack on the popular West Loop establishment. Johnson is charged with murder and one count of drug possession for the killing of his 47-year-old co-worker.

“This is not something that happened intimately in a home,” Judge Deidre Dyer said in handing down her decision. “This happened in a public restaurant, in a public place where people don’t expect to be murdered.”

Chicago police officers were called to the scene around 5 p.m. Wednesday and found Francois Reed-Swain lying on the floor in the dining room, according to a police report. A witness pointed at Johnson and said, “That’s him.” He’s the one who did it,” according to the report.

Before the stabbing, a bartender heard Johnson making statements “praising Jesus” and saw him lying face down on the ground, Assistant State's Attorney Anne McCord said. The bartender then observed Reed-Swain asking Johnson why he was on the floor, she said.

He stood up and the two walked away from the bar, the bartender reported to authorities. Then Johnson pushed Reed-Swain and began punching him, McCord said.

Johnson chased Reed-Swain into the dining room where two customers were sitting, she said, and stabbed him with a knife. The workers ordered him to drop the knife and he eventually obeyed. The bartender rushed to help Reed-Swain, she said, but he was pronounced dead a short time later at Stroger Hospital.

After his arrest, Johnson made spontaneous statements that he “did not intend to do that” to Reed-Swain, prosecutors said.

His public defender, Molly Schranz, argued that there was only limited surveillance video that captured the attack and that attorneys have not yet viewed it. She also said witnesses reported it appeared the two men were “play fighting.”

In response, McCord said the “horror of this incident” was witnessed by four people who were struggling to understand what they were seeing at 5 p.m. in the middle of a restaurant.

“They thought they were playing. They couldn’t believe what was happening in front of them,” she said. “What they saw before their eyes was first-degree murder. »

In a statement, City Winery founder and CEO Michael Dorf said he was devastated by the loss of a staff member to the violence. He said the venue plans to add security.

“What we experienced is the opposite of what we try to offer every day: joyful hospitality,” Dorf wrote in the statement. “Frank will be missed and his memory will be a blessing.”