Las Vegas shooting victim sues hotel, festival organizers

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A California woman injured in the recent mass shooting at an open-air Las Vegas concert is suing the hotel where the shooter fired from, as well as the concert’s organizers and the makers of the bump stocks that made it possible to gun down dozens of people in a matter of minutes.

Paige Gasper, 21, said in the lawsuit that MGM Resorts International and its subsidiary Mandalay Corp., which own the hotel, failed to properly monitor the gunman’s activities and responded too late to the shooting of a hotel security officer minutes before the gunman started firing at the crowd.

The lawsuit added that the music festival organizer, Live Nation Entertainment, Inc., was negligent for failing to provide adequate exits and properly train staff for an emergency.

People wait in a medical staging area on October 2, 2017, after a mass shooting during a music festival in Las Vegas, US. /Reuters Photo‍

Gasper said the defendants' negligence led to her suffering life-threatening injuries when a bullet shattered her ribs and lacerated her liver.

Her lawsuit also accused Slide Fire Solutions, the maker of the bump stock devices used by the gunman, of negligence, design and manufacturing defects. The devices are legal and allow semiautomatic rifles to operate as if they were fully automatic machine guns.

In a separate lawsuit filed over the weekend, a group of plaintiffs accused the makers of bump stocks of negligence for inflicting emotional distress on thousands of people.

Stephen Paddock, 64, fired into the festival crowd from a 32nd-floor suite at the Mandalay Bay hotel on October 1, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds more. He killed himself before the police stormed his suite.

The companies did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

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Source(s): Reuters