Man in custody, woman safe after Caesars Palace hostage incident

LAS VEGAS — A man held a woman hostage inside a Las Vegas Strip hotel room for more than five hours on Tuesday afternoon, police said.

Officers were called at 9:15 a.m. to the 3500 block of Las Vegas Boulevard, South, after a man grabbed a woman from a hallway and locked her in his room, according to Metropolitan Police Department Capt. Steve Connell.

In a statement at 2:45 p.m. Tuesday, police said SWAT entered the room and detained the man. The woman was “safe and with officers.”

It was unclear if the two people were related.

Police did not specify which hotel was involved, but officers were gathered outside Caesars Palace on Tuesday afternoon.

Connell said that initial reports stated the man was armed, but he had not fired any weapons and there was no evidence that he had any guns in the room with him.

Connell said the man was throwing chairs and other items to people below the hotel room after breaking open the glass windows.

Outside the Palace Tower, four security guards blocked guests from visiting the pool and a certain floor, though they would not say which.

“Right now we have an emergency,” a security guard told one group of tourists carrying coffee and food attempting to visit the pool.

Bri Amidei was visiting Las Vegas from Chicago. She asked security around 1:30 p.m. if she could visit the pool, but she was turned away.

She said she had not heard about the hostage situation because things had seemed normal around the hotel all day. She had noticed police inside the casino.

Sabrina Zazay, of California, was trying to visit the pool with her friends when a security guard told them the pool was having maintenance issues.

“There’s no way a billion-dollar corporation has their pool down on this hot of a day because of maintenance issues,” her friend, Giovanni Tratito said. “It’s a lie.”

The group had been in town since Saturday, meeting up with other friends from New York.

Zazay and another girl with their group said they started getting calls from their mothers early Tuesday afternoon, worrying about what they had seen in a news story as happening at the hotel. The women said they texted their mothers that they were fine and shared the information on the woman held hostage with the group.

“I’m not scared,” Zazay said, “but my mom was.”

Through the afternoon, busy tourists marched over to the Palace Tower with their luggage, prepared to check in. A handful were turned away before the elevators, but most were allowed upstairs.

On Las Vegas Boulevard, warm tourists quickly walked past Caesars. They turned their heads at the dozens of police cars around each entrance. A broken window faced the pool and Flamingo Road.