Las Vegas casino security guard charged with 3 sexual assaults

New charges have been filed against a man who was accused last year of sexually assaulting a woman while on duty as an armed security guard for the Four Queens in downtown Las Vegas.

The Metropolitan Police Department announced Jose Dejesus Garcia’s initial arrest in a press release on Aug. 23, 2018. According to the release, Garcia, then 39, sexually assaulted the woman “after threatening to turn her over to police for suspected prostitution.”

He originally faced two counts of sexual assault, one count of attempted sexual assault and two counts of open or gross lewdness in that case. Las Vegas court records show the charges were dismissed in February.

No other details surrounding the alleged sexual assault were released at the time, but his arrest report later revealed that he apparently forced the woman into a stairwell, where she performed oral sex on him. In exchange, Garcia promised not to call the police, according to the report.

Five days after Metro’s announcement, two more women came forward and also accused Garcia of sexually assaulting them inside a stairwell in July that year. Their stories were similar to that of the first victim, according to Garcia’s arrest report in the recent case.

“It should be noted the LVMPD press release never provided the stairwell location of the initial sexual assault that was reported,” a detective wrote in the report.

On or around July 30, the women met two men while drinking at a bar inside the Four Queens. The women eventually joined the men upstairs in their hotel room, according to the report.

As they were leaving the hotel room later that day, Garcia was apparently waiting for them near the elevator, and, the report shows, told them that “he knew what they were doing, working as prostitutes in the casino.”

“Jose told them he would not call the police but in exchange they had to do something for him,” the report states.

Garcia led them to a stairwell, the women told police, where he allegedly forced at least one of them to perform oral sex on him. The other woman secretly recorded the assault on her cellphone, and the video was later collected by Metro detectives as evidence, according to the report.

Afterwards, the security guard instructed them to go down several flights of stairs before exiting the stairwell “to avoid being obvious to surveillance.”

The women said they were too scared to call police until they came across a news story about Garcia’s arrest.

The report for the recent case was completed and signed in September last year, but Justice Court records show that a warrant for his arrest was not granted until Oct. 9 this year. He was arrested three days later on the 1800 block of Balboa Avenue, records show.

As of Friday, Garcia, now 40, remained held on $20,000 bail at the Clark County Detention Center on three counts of sexual assault, according to jail and court records. His preliminary hearing was set for Feb. 18.

Contact Rio Lacanlale at rlacanlale@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @riolacanlale on Twitter.