A woman who was among the nearly 500 Las Vegas Strip concert-goers wounded in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history is suing MGM Resorts International in what is expected to be the first of many filed against the casino giant in the aftermath of the massacre.
Paige Gaspar, a 21-year-old Texas native attending school in California, claims MGM failed to provide adequate security for the outdoor event and did not respond quickly enough on Sunday night, October 1, when Stephen Paddock unleashed on the crowd a 10-minute barrage of automatic weapons fire from a suite on the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay, killing 58 and wounding 489 before shooting himself as police closed in.
The suit, filed October 10 in Clark County District Court, also faults Mandalay Bay, alleging the hotel did not properly monitor guests and adequately train and supervise employees, a failure that allowed Paddock to hole up in the room for days with an arsenal, the suit says.
MGM owns Mandalay Bay and the open-air venue, the 15-acre Las Vegas Village, where the concert, the Route 91 Harvest country music festival, was held.
Also named in the action are Live Nation Entertainment, organizer of the concert, which drew 22,000 attendees, Slide Fire Solutions, a company that manufacturers a device Paddock used to convert his semiautomatic weapons into fully automatic ones, and the estate of the 64-year-old gunman, a resident of Mesquite, Nev., some 80 miles to the north, who was known to several Las Vegas casinos as a frequent video poker player.
Gasper was shot in the chest and underwent multiple surgeries, according to news reports citing a page on the website GoFundMe.
“Paige loves Las Vegas and went to the Route 91 concert expecting to have the wonderful time people are accustomed to having here in our city,” her attorney Nathan Morris said. “She wanted us to take action to address the safety failures that happened to her, and together we believe that through this action we can make Las Vegas as safe as it should be, so that it remains a world-class destination that we know it is. We have to maintain our reputation as the safest place on the planet.”
MGM declined to respond, according to news reports. Chairman and CEO James Murren has said the company is “working with law enforcement and will continue to do all we can to help all of those involved,” including donating $3 million to assist the victims, their families and first-responder organizations.
Beyond that the company said it was deferring all communication on the case to the FBI and Las Vegas police, a standard procedure, according to security experts, in the aftermath of crises of this magnitude.
However, MGM has questioned a revised timeline the Clark County Sheriff’s Department released concerning the events surrounding the shooting. The new timeline, which may figure prominently in the Gaspar suit and the others that are likely to follow, suggests a Mandalay security guard was shot by Paddock six minutes before he began firing on the crowd, not in the middle of the ambush, as originally reported.
“We believe what is currently being expressed may not be accurate,” an MGM spokesman said.
Interviewed last week on Fox News Sunday, two days before Gaspar filed her suit, Steve Wynn weighed in to say Paddock’s behavior would have raised red flags at his resorts.
“The scenario that we’re aware of would have indicated that he didn’t let anyone in the room for two or three days,” the chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts said. “That would have triggered a whole bunch of alarms here, and we would have?on behalf of the guests, of course?investigated for safety.”
Inquiries are launched at Wynn properties when a guest has a “Do Not Disturb” marker on their room for more than 12 hours, he said. But a spokesman for Wynn said that the policy had only been implemented after the shooting.
Concluding back in 2015 that Las Vegas was susceptible to this kind of attack, Wynn said he brought in security consultants to ensure his Strip resorts, Wynn Las Vegas and Encore, were safe as could be. Doors are guarded at all times and there are magnetometers “at every employee entrance and at every place of human collection like the nightclubs,” he said.
Despite these claims of discreet magnetometers, visitors to Wynn were wanded by security officers before entering any entrance to the property on the day after the shooting. Subsequent days saw security cordons relaxed.
“Under most circumstances, it’s unnecessary to wand people or to do any kind of invasive procedure,” he said. “The things we’re looking for, that represent potential threats, are much more obvious and allow us a great deal of freedom in allowing us to not interfere with the normal flow of people.” He didn’t elaborate.
Nevada Gaming Control Board Chairman A.G. Burnett has taken a somewhat different tack, saying there was little, if anything, any casino could have done to prevent the tragedy.
He added that he’s called on his agency to deploy extra plainclothes security in the state’s resorts but provided no details.
“I’m not sure myself exactly which casinos they’re going to be in and when,” he said. “And I don’t want anybody to know.”
Amid concerns the shooting might scare off the convention trade that is the lifeblood of the Strip, Murren appeared at the Venetian last Tuesday to address attendees of IMEX America, the world’s largest gathering of professionals in the meeting and convention industry, telling them how much the people of Las Vegas depend on them.
“They have a job because of you. And without you, they don’t have a job,’’ he said. “You are doing what you can do. You are coming here supporting this destination and helping those families take care of themselves.’’
Joined by U.S. Travel Association President Roger Dow, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority President Rossi Ralenkotter and IMEX Group Chairman Ray Bloom, Murren spoke briefly and somberly. “The meetings and convention business?that is the backbone of this entire business model. Without that, everything else falls away,’’ he told the audience.
About 12,000 people were expected to attend IMEX America, including 3,000 exhibitors from 150 countries. The show ran through Thursday at Las Vegas Sands’ Sands Expo and Convention Center.
LVS and the family of chairman, CEO and majority shareholder Sheldon Adelson said they’ve established a $4 million relief fund. Caesars Entertainment has organized $2 million in donations and said it will be making additional contributions along with entertainers Celine Dion and Ringo Starr, who have pledged to donate show proceeds to aid the victims. The company also is providing support by delivering food and supplies to hospitals for staff and victims’ families, lodging for volunteers and coordinating blood drives to help replenish the city’s depleted supply.
An online drive on the GoFundMe site organized by Clark County Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak and Sheriff Joe Lombardo has raised an additional $10 million or more. That effort, launched in partnership with the National Compassion Fund and supported by the foundations of several casino companies, is ongoing.
