US hostage situation unfolds at Las Vegas hotel

A man has taken a woman hostage inside the Caesars Palace Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas police said Tuesday.

The man pulled the woman into a hotel room around 9:15 a.m., police spokesman Capt. Steve Connell said. A chair and other items were thrown out a broken window and landed in the pool area below, he said.

Officers have secured the area outside the room, Connell said. No shots have been fired, and it’s not clear if the man is armed.

Broken glass and furniture fell intermittently for about an hour from a window of the Palace Tower, said Associated Press writer John Marshall, who was on vacation with family. Marshall said it appeared the incident unfolded several floors above his room on the fifth floor.

“It looks like he’s pretty much emptied the room of furniture,” Marshall said of the man barricaded upstairs. Marshall said seat cushions, a chair and other items hit a ledge outside the window of his room, and some fell to the pool area that Marshall said had been evacuated before about noon.

Beverly Blackwell, 56, was lounging by one of the Caesars Palace pools with her husband, Chris, when someone shouted that something was falling from a window.

Blackwell heard glass shattering and then saw the curtains blowing from the broken window. Blackwell said she and her husband thought it might be a shooter or attack. Staff then yelled that the guests needed to evacuate the pool and rushed everyone out.

“When we saw the window shatter it was kind of a surreal feeling, it got pretty scary,” she said. “We were told to gather our stuff and rush out the back.”

TVs, chairs and objects could be seen flying from the window. Blackwell said all the guests stood by Flamingo Road nervously waiting not knowing what to do next. After 30 minutes, the guests were told they could go back to their rooms.

Officer Aden OcampoGomez, a Las Vegas police spokesman, said there were no immediate reports of injuries to anyone in the pool area.

Marshall said he and his family had no word from the hotel about what was happening but said they remained in their room as a precaution. Hotel housekeeping staff members were still working in nearby rooms, he said.

Hotel representatives did not immediately respond to telephone and email messages seeking comment.