Gunman opens fire on casino gamblers

A man opened fire on the gamblers in a Las Vegas casino early today, wounding four people before he was tackled by off-duty military reservists, police said. A fifth person was hurt in a crush of people fleeing the casino.

Steven Zegrean, 51, of Las Vegas, an unemployed house painter who immigrated from Hungary, is alleged to have fired shots from a balcony overlooking the New York New York casino floor.

He was arrested on charges including attempted murder, battery with a deadly weapon and discharging a firearm in an occupied structure, police said.

“It was crazy, pandemonium,” said Jade Jacobson, 28, a tourist from Deland, Florida, whose cousin, a dance teacher from Pennsylvania, was wounded in the leg.

“People were running and jumping over slot machines and knocking over chairs,” Jacobson said. “All I was thinking was that I could die right now.”

Police said 16 shots were fired in the 12.45am incident. All the injuries were described as minor, and none of the victims were kept in hospital, authorities said.

Las Vegas police Captain James Dillon said a woman and a teenage boy were wounded; a man was grazed by a bullet; a woman was hit by a bullet fragment or shrapnel; and a woman was bruised and scraped when she fell amid the crowd of people exiting the casino.

“All we know so far is that he was emotionally distraught,” Dillon said. “I can say with absolute certainty that this has nothing whatever to do with terrorism.”

Zegrean emptied a semi-automatic handgun toward the casino floor before he was tackled by a US Army reservist, a Navy reservist and others who held him for police, Dillon said. He said he did not know the names of the people who intervened.

Dillon said police have a casino surveillance video that shows the shooting.

Melody Zegrean, 43, a Las Vegas resident who identified herself as Steven Zegrean’s cousin, said he had been divorced for several years and estranged from most of his family since his ex-wife remarried.

“I love my cousin and everything,” she said, “but his temper and not being able to relate has really gotten worse recently. He’s been threatening the family for some time now. He’s been pushing everyone away.”

She described Steven Zegrean as a Hungarian immigrant and unemployed house painter who liked to gamble.

Troy Sanchez, a 13-year-old from Van Nuys, California, who was wounded in the left ankle, said he heard more than 10 gunshots from a balcony over an escalator that takes customers to the casino floor. He was with his mother and older brother, who works at the casino’s Manhattan Express roller coaster.

“We thought it was fireworks,” the teenager said. “I didn’t even see the guy at all.”

Police said they believed Zegrean entered the casino from a walkway connecting the New York New York to the MGM Grand, and walked past a vendor and a shop before opening fire near the top of the bank of escalators.

The 2,000-room hotel-casino, which opened in 1997, features a façade replicating the New York City skyline, with a 47-storey fake Empire State Building, a 150-foot Statue of Liberty and a Coney Island-style roller coaster. It is owned by MGM Mirage Inc.

Casino spokeswoman Yvette Monet said its operations had been fully restored hours later.