Caesars Palace hostage drama ends with rescue, man arrested

A man held a woman against her will inside a guest room at Caesars Palace for more than five hours Tuesday afternoon, and objects were hurled out of a broken window before he was arrested and his hostage released to safety, police said.

Officers were called at 9:15 a.m. to the Strip hotel, located on 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.

SWAT was called in with crisis negotiators within two hours and Metro vehicles stood at every entrance to Caesars with ambulances waiting within minutes and security moving quickly through the casino and blocking hotel elevators throughout the day.

The tense and lengthy barricade, with some swimsuit-clad tourists watching from the pool area, came to an end at about 2:45 p.m., when police said in a statement that SWAT officers entered the room and detained the man and that the woman held captive was “safe and with officers.”

By late afternoon, it remained unclear if the two people were related and also what had prompted the man to hold the woman hostage.

Connell said 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.

At one point at noon, the woman was still being held in the guest room, but Connell said police had spoken to her.

Ducking for cover

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

In a video that appeared on social media, a boxlike object is seen tossed through a large hole in the broken window, with part of a white curtain sticking out, and two people in security uniforms are seen ducking for cover after it made an impact near the resort’s pool area.

SWAT director Bryan Peterson told the Review-Journal that a mental health professional comes with SWAT on every call to evaluate whether the actions they plan to take will help de-escalate the situation or upset the person they’re trying to arrest.

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

“Right now we have an emergency,” a security guard told one group of tourists carrying coffee and food and who were 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.

Amidei 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.”

‘I’m not scared but my mom was’

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 this afternoon, worrying about what they had seen in a news story about the situation. 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.”

Throughout 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, 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.

Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter. Contact Jeff Burbank at jburbank@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0382. Follow him @JeffBurbank2 on Twitter.