Woman’s good deed after Las Vegas shooting nearly went bad
Las Vegas police officers who watched over the Stratosphere after the Oct. 1 shooting differ in their accounts of a woman’s random act of kindness nearly gone awry.
The story is included in a batch of documents the Metropolitan Police Department released Wednesday.
Officer L. Vincent’s account, written Oct. 8, states a woman walked up to a security guard and handed him a box. She then walked away.
The guard put the box down and alerted other officers. They stopped the woman and asked her what was inside. She told them she brought them doughnuts.
A guard’s dog sniffed the box to confirm it wasn’t dangerous. The officers then told her about the shooting on the Las Vegas Strip.
Metro Sgt. Justin Eberling’s report told a more dramatic version.
Without a word, the woman in a black Volkswagen Jetta threw a wrapped box in a bag in front of an officer stationed in the valet area of the Stratosphere, Eberling wrote in his Oct. 7 report.
She drove toward Eberling. He aimed a rifle at her. She stopped.
Two officers ordered her out of the car. The woman smiled at them.
Radio traffic had just reported that the Strip shooter, Stephen Paddock, had a girlfriend of Asian descent, just like the driver. The girlfriend, Marilou Danley, was in the Philippines during the shooting.
An officer patted down the driver and asked what she threw.
A police dog checked the box. Inside were doughnuts.
The woman said she felt bad about the shooting. She wanted to do something nice for the officers.
Eberling thanked her for the kind gesture. Then he told her not to throw anything else at officers.
“She could’ve been shot,” Eberling wrote in his report.
Eberling spoke highly of his colleagues at the Stratosphere that night.
“They used sound tactics and verbal commands to deescalate what could have resulted in a catastrophic use of force on a citizen who chose the wrong time and place to do something kind for us,” he wrote.
Contact Wade Tyler Millward at 702-383-4602 or wmillward @reviewjournal.com. Follow @wademillward on Twitter. Review-Journal staff writer Madelyn Reese contributed to this report.