A fight at a popular Columbia University bistro turned fatal early yesterday after two men were shot outside Radio Perfecto, steps from the gates of the university campus.

The brawl began at around 3 a.m. among a group of men seated at the bar inside the restaurant at Amsterdam Avenue and West 118th Street, a spot frequented by students from the Columbia University Law School and the School of International and Public Affairs. As the dispute escalated, a security guard asked the men to leave and escorted them out of the crowded restaurant, an attorney for Radio Perfecto, Gary Jenkins, said.

Five minutes later, 23-year-old Delquan Kearns lay dead on the sidewalk near the restaurant with a gunshot wound to the head, and his 27-year-old brother, Stephone Jones, was found shot in the right arm, police and family members of the victims said. The others had scattered.

A family friend, John Jackson, 45, of Harlem, described Kearns, a native New Yorker who lived in Pennsylvania, as “fun loving,” and said he was in the city to visit his mother. Mr. Jones was treated at St. Luke’s Hospital and was in stable condition yesterday.

Neither was affiliated with the university, Columbia officials said.

A doorman at a Columbia residence hall around the corner from the scene of the shooting, Richard Muller-Thym, 57, said he heard the gunshots and ran out several minutes later. He said a body had been covered with a white tarp, where he said it lay for several hours until a woman was brought by police to identify it.

Mr. Muller-Thym said it was not the first time fighting at the bar had turned violent. In a logbook entry shown to The New York Sun, he wrote: “Fights have been common, blood has been spilled, broken bottles and knives have been wielded, and guns have been fired. And now it seems someone is dead.”

A Columbia student, Oliver Corbet, 27, who lives at 118th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, described Radio Perfecto as his “corner bar,” and said he had never witnessed fights there.

Columbia University was on alert yesterday after the shooting. An e-mail sent out to students, and posters around campus, warned that the shooting suspect was on the loose, noting that he may have fled east down 119th Street toward Morningside Avenue.

The e-mail said a forum was being planned to discuss campus security following the shooting and a string of bias incidents on campus during the fall semester.