A woman allegedly drove her motorhome through the doors of a casino after she was escorted off the property by staff for disorderly conduct.
Jennifer Stitt, 50, reportedly crashed her vehicle into the Cannery casino in Las Vegas shortly before 06:00 (13:00 GMT) on Friday morning, accidentally injuring a 66-year-old caretaker in her rage.
Following the incident, North Las Vegas police spokesperson Eric Leavitt told KVVU-TV the woman kept her foot on the accelerator after her lime-green 1972 RV got stuck in the entrance to the building.
The officer explained to the local Las Vegas Review-Journal: “A little bit farther and it would have been into the table games…And she kept gassing it.”
Boyd Gaming, which owns the Cannery casino, said the company was in contact with the caretaker’s family and that he is expected to make a full recovery.
Stitt has been charged with attempted murder and is being held at the Las Vegas Detention Center in lieu of $100,000 (£78,000) bail.
The incident has renewed calls for better protections to be installed around live casinos around Las Vegas, with law enforcement officials long describing the establishments as “soft targets”. Veteran Las Vegas casino security director Douglas Florence told FOX5 Vegas that the Cannery had no bollards or other barriers outside the building to stop someone ramming into the building and called on all such establishments to install safeguards outside their premises to protect both players and staff.
Thousands of metal barriers, such as those proposed by Florence, have been installed along the famous Las Vegas Boulevard to protect the city’s 42 million yearly visitors from wayward cars. Deputy chief Andy Walsh of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, explained: “Obviously, we’re an economy that’s based on tourism, so we want that whole visitor experience…to be very positive.”
The city has been on high alert since the Mandalay Bay shooting on 1 October 2017, but most added protections have been focused on the central strip in the city with few of the safeguards added around establishments located outside the centre. This incident could be a wake-up call to councillors that similar barriers should be erected around all such locations around sin city.
