‘It will end badly’: Man threatened violence at Caesars Palace
A man suspected of holding a woman hostage in a Caesars Palace hotel room was wanted in Colorado, according to court records.
An arrest report released Wednesday said Matthew Mannix, 35, was holding his girlfriend hostage in room 2128 for nearly five hours, threatening to cut her tongue out and open fire on authorities.
Mannix appeared briefly in court Wednesday afternoon, when Justice of the Peace Rebecca Saxe ordered him held on a $750,000 bail. The judge said she was concerned that Mannix, who is from Colorado, would not appear for future court dates because of a fugitive warrant out of Colorado, active protective orders against him and the violent nature of Tuesday’s alleged kidnapping.
Hotel security received multiple noise complaints just after 9 a.m. Tuesday, but when they knocked on the door, Mannix warned, “if you don’t leave it will end badly,” according to the arrest report from the Metropolitan Police Department.
The woman inside yelled to police “he has a knife,” but Mannix claimed he had a “magazine full of rounds,” police wrote in the report.
Detectives found the knife but no other weapons in the hotel room.
Mannix is accused of breaking the windows in his room and throwing large furniture down 21 floors to the pool below. The woman later told police she feared he was going to throw her out the window.
“The damage was some of the most severe property damage that I have seen in my 18 years as a detective,” an officer wrote in the report.
Officials estimated that Mannix caused more than $50,000 in property damage, although the exact amount of damage was still being investigated, according to the report.
Police said they suspected he was smoking a meth pipe in the room, and he and his girlfriend were suspected of being impaired when they spoke to officers.
“Mannix was so high that he was paranoid and had a schizophrenic episode where he was yelling out random comments and numbers and saying that he would pay for everything because he has a lot of money,” police wrote in the report.
In court on Wednesday afternoon, Chief Deputy District Attorney John Jones said Mannix had two prior convictions out of Colordao — a kidnapping conviction from 2022 and property damage conviction from 2012. He also has four active protection orders against him, Jones said. It was unclear why Mannix had a fugitive warrant out of Colorado.
Jones asked for Mannix to be placed on a $2 million bail, and said Mannix is a “flight risk.”
“It is our intent that that amount serve as a detention order,” Jones told the judge, who later imposed the lower bail amount.
Saxe also ordered Mannix to be placed on high level electronic monitoring if he is released on bail.
Mannix appeared in court wearing a blue Clark County Detention Center uniform on Wednesday afternoon. He said “good afternoon” as his case was called, and later made a brief attempt to speak through a microphone, but did not further address the judge during the hearing.
Deputy Public Defender Marissa Pensabene said Mannix, who has worked as a mechanic for several years, has an address in Colorado and had been visiting Las Vegas when the alleged kidnapping happened. She argued for Mannix to be given a maximum of $20,000 in bail.
Court records show Mannix was booked on charges of kidnapping, coercion with force or threat of force with a deadly weapon, destroying more than $5,000 in property, resisting a public officer with a deadly weapon that is not a firearm, disregarding safety of people or property and being a fugitive in another state.
Mannix remained in the Clark County Detention Center on Wednesday and is scheduled to appear in court again on Monday.
Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter. Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.