Gunman Kills 1, Shuts Vegas Strip for Hours

Man peacefully surrenders after hourslong standoff
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Mar 25, 2017 7:03 PM CDT
Gunman Kills 1, Shuts Vegas Strip for Hours
Metro officers join SWAT officers as they surround a suspect barricaded on a bus after a fatal shooting in the vehicle earlier today shutting down the busy tourism corridor for hours near the Cosmopolitan hotel-casino in Las Vegas, Saturday, March 25, 2017. Las Vegas Police officer Larry Hadfield said...   (L.E. Baskow)

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 11am PDT Saturday when the bus was stopped on Las Vegas Boulevard near the Cosmopolitan hotel-casino. "He was just contained to that location. He never exited the bus," Clark County's assistant sheriff said. Two people were taken to the hospital, reports the AP. 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 casinos to warn tourists to bunker down, leaving these normally bustling pedestrian areas and a road notorious for taxi-to-taxi traffic empty.

Some in the Cosmopolitan—guests out on their balconies, people on the pool deck—saw the tense situation unfold below. Former NBA player Scot Pollard was at a bar at the Cosmopolitan around 11am when he saw several people, including staff, running through the area toward the casino and screaming "get out of the way." After he was told that the area would be closed, he went back to his room, which oversees the Strip. "We can hear them negotiating. We can hear them saying things like 'No one else needs to get hurt,' 'Come out with your hands up. We are not going anywhere,' " he said. A police officer said just before 3:30pm that the man, who had a handgun, surrendered without incident. Police did not open fire and said the man is the only suspect. Terrorism or any connection to an earlier robbery nearby that shut down a part of the Bellagio has been ruled out. (More Las Vegas stories.)

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