Car hits pedestrians on Vegas Strip, 1 dead
Print Edition
A woman intentionally swerved her car onto a busy sidewalk two or three times and mowed down people outside a Las Vegas casino, killing 1 person and injuring at least 30 others, police said.
The crash on Sunday evening in front of the Paris and Planet Hollywood hotels occurred on a busy stretch of the Las Vegas Strip across from the dancing water fountains of the Bellagio hotel-casino where visitors crowd sidewalks as they were walking from one casino to another. The Miss Universe pageant was being held nearby at the Planet Hollywood Las Vegas Resort & Casino at the time of the crash.
Police believe this was an intentional act by a woman in her 20s who “went up and off these streets, two or possibly three times,” Lieutenant Dan McGrath said. A 3-year-old child was in the vehicle with her but was not hurt, said Captain Brett Zimmerman.
Police did not give a possible motive. The woman is being interviewed and is having her blood drawn, police said. She is being held in jail with charges pending.
The vehicle was in the northbound lanes of Las Vegas Boulevard near Bellagio Way when it drove up onto the sidewalk about 6:30pm in front of the Paris Hotel & Casino and struck pedestrians, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Lt Peter Boffelli said. The person killed was an adult, he said.
Police are reviewing video from casino-hotel surveillance cameras, Zimmerman said. “We know this was not an act of terrorism,” he said. “We will comb through that footage to get a detailed idea of what occurred.”
After the crash, the vehicle continued to head east on Flamingo Road before it was found at a hotel, McGrath said. The driver was taken into custody at the hotel, police said.
McGrath said the 1996 Oldsmobile was registered in Oregon and the driver had recently moved to the area. The pedestrians were not on the road and were not at fault, he added.
Justin Cochrane, a property manager from Santa Barbara, California, said he was having dinner at a sidewalk restaurant outside the Paris Hotel and across the street from the famous Bellagio Fountain when the incident took place.
The car appeared to be going at least 45 kilometers per hour when it first hit the pedestrians on Las Vegas Boulevard, Cochrane said. “It was just massacring people,” he said.
The vehicle then went farther down the road and drove back into another crowd of pedestrians on the sidewalk, he said.
Clark County Fire Chief Greg Cassell said the call for help came in at 6:38pm and 70 emergency crew workers were sent to the scene.
Danita Cohen, spokeswoman for University Medical Center, said 15 crash of the victims were brought to its trauma center, one of whom died. Three remained in critical condition.
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