LAS VEGAS — A man riding on a double-decker bus on the Las Vegas Strip pulled a gun and started shooting, killing one person and wounding another before barricading himself inside in a standoff that lasted hours before he finally surrendered.
LAS VEGAS — A man riding on a double-decker bus on the Las Vegas Strip pulled a gun and started shooting, killing one person and wounding another before barricading himself inside in a standoff that lasted hours before he finally surrendered.
The standoff began about 11 a.m. Saturday with a shooting that killed one person and injured another. It happened on a double-decker bus stopped on Las Vegas Boulevard near the Cosmopolitan hotel-casino.
“He was on the bus. He was shooting people on the bus. He was just contained to that location. He never exited the bus,” Clark County Assistant Sheriff Tom Roberts said.
Two people were taken to the hospital after the shooting, University Medical Center spokeswoman Danita Cohen said. One died, and the other was in fair condition.
For hours, crisis negotiators, robots and armored vehicles surrounded the bus with authorities uncertain if there were any more victims inside. Meanwhile, officers swept into the casinos to warn tourists to bunker down until further notice, leaving these normally bustling pedestrian areas and a road notorious for taxi-to-taxi traffic completely empty. The Strip, normally crowded with cars and people, was shut down for blocks in both directions.
Some in the Cosmopolitan saw the tense situation unfold below.
Former NBA player Scot Pollard, who is staying at the Cosmopolitan, told The Associated Press by phone that he was at a bar at the hotel-casino around 11 a.m. when he saw several people, including staff, running through the area toward the casino and repeatedly screaming “get out of the way.”
Visitors were also hiding out inside some of the other prominent casino properties affected, including the Bellagio, Paris, Planet Hollywood and Bally.