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 at about 11am on Saturday on the bus when it was 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, she said.
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 was shut down for blocks in both directions.
Some in the Cosmopolitan — hotel guests out over their balconies, party people on the pool deck — saw the tense situation unfold below.
Former NBA player Scot Pollard, who is staying at the Cosmopolitan, told reporters by telephone that he was at a bar at the hotel-casino about 11am when he saw several people, including staff, running through the area toward the casino and repeatedly 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. We are not leaving,’” he said.
Las Vegas Police Officer Larry Hadfield said that just before 3:30pm, the man, who had a handgun, surrendered without incident.
Police did not open fire and said they believe the man is the only suspect. Terrorism or any connection to an earlier robbery nearby that shut down a part of the Bellagio have been ruled out. No other information about the man has been released.
By 4pm, pedestrians were back in the area and northbound traffic on Las Vegas boulevard had reopened while investigators worked to clean up the other lane where the bus was still grounded.
The bus was operated by the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada.
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