WEEK IN REVIEW:
Police arrest three in MGM Grand beating
RED ROCK AND ROLLING IN DOUGH: Manuel Castaneda cleans the pool at Red Rock Resort on Monday in preparation for the $925 million casino's grand opening. Station Casinos executives said 6,000 glasses of Dom Perignon were poured during Tuesday night's private party for 3,800 guests. Figuring five glasses in a bottle, about 1,200 bottles of the expensive French champagne were uncorked. At a retail price of $130 to $200 a bottle, it's no wonder Station Casinos Chairman Frank Fertitta III said he saw the sales representative for Dom Perignon smiling over dinner at the resort's T-Bones Chophouse. Photo by Clint Karlsen.
This still photo from convenience store security camera footage released by Las Vegas police shows one of several robberies that authorities say a group involved in the beating of two MGM Grand landscapers also carried out last weekend.
Police began making arrests last week in connection with the widely publicized beating of two MGM Grand workers caught on surveillance video.
The video, which aired on national news networks, showed images of one of a string of attacks last weekend that police said were carried out by a group of 10 to 15 black men in their late teens or early 20s. The rampage included beatings of at least five people, the pillaging of a northwest valley convenience store and a shooting in a park.
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Daryle Williams, an 18-year-old Mojave High School basketball player, was arrested Monday in connection with the case.
Williams' attorney said police had apparently identified all the youths who beat the two MGM Grand workers early April 15. Attorney Brian Bloomfield said Williams was shown about a dozen photographs of suspects when he was questioned by detectives, and police appeared to know the names of all the young men caught on surveillance video beating the hotel employees.
School sources said police have been working with administrators at four campuses to identify the juveniles caught on tape. The schools are Mojave, Cimarron-Memorial and Canyon Springs high schools and Jeffrey Behavioral Junior/Senior High School in North Las Vegas, an alternative school for students who have been disciplinary problems for the district.
Police made two more arrests Friday, after a massive late-night SWAT raid at Williams' house. Demarcus Smith, 18, and a teenager whose name was not released because he is a juvenile were taken into custody shortly after midnight, police said.
Williams has acknowledged that some in the group are his friends, but he has not provided the names to police, Bloomfield said.
"The last thing Daryle wants to be labeled as is a snitch," Bloomfield said. "I always want my clients to cooperate and tell the truth, but I also don't come from a culture where being labeled a snitch could get you a couple of gunshots in the back of the head."
MONDAY
Kincaid-Chauncey
takes the stand
Former Clark County Commissioner Mary Kincaid-Chauncey stunned the courtroom by taking the stand in her own defense in the ongoing political corruption case.
Kincaid-Chauncey, who is accused of accepting bribes from strip club owner Michael Galardi, told jurors that she accepted a total of $9,000 from Galardi but that it was on behalf of family members. Kincaid-Chauncey said she never took the $70,000 to $80,000 in cash bribes Galardi claimed in his testimony.
Defense attorney Richard Wright said Kincaid-Chauncey made the decision to take the stand over the weekend.
TUESDAY
Errors claimed in data on Las Vegas
The federal government relied on inaccurate data to justify dropping Las Vegas from a list of cities eligible for special anti-terrorism funding, county officials said.
The officials said they identified at least 25 mistakes in classified U.S. Department of Homeland Security data, including information asserting that the Las Vegas area had no convention centers or military bases.
"We told them they were flat wrong on their numbers," said Clark County Sheriff Bill Young. "It got a little murky on how they got those numbers."
WEDNESDAY
Dario Herrera
testifies at trial
Dario Herrera denied on the witness stand that he ever accepted cash payments from strip club owner Michael Galardi.
The former county commissioner, who is accused of accepting bribes from Galardi, also tearfully recounted sexual encounters he had with strippers.
Whether Herrera would testify had been unclear. But sources said that after his former colleague, Mary Kincaid-Chauncey, opted to testify earlier in the week, Herrera had little choice.
"It's always the client's decision on whether to testify," Herrera's attorney, Jerry Bernstein, said outside court. "Dario has always wanted to tell people what happened, and today he had a chance to do it."
THURSDAY
Report blasts child abuse agencies
A report on the case files of 79 Clark County children whose deaths might have been the result of abuse or neglect revealed serious dysfunction in the public agencies that investigate cases of child abuse and death.
Among the problems were safety assessments added to children's files after their deaths, lax efforts by social services providers to protect siblings of the dead children, and poor communication among the agencies that investigate and prosecute suspects in suspicious child deaths.
"Everyone who sees this report will know the system has broken down and that improvements are badly needed," said retired Nevada Supreme Court Justice Deborah Agosti, chairwoman of a panel looking into the troubles.
FRIDAY
Panel warned about
fuel consumption
Fuel consumption in Southern Nevada is on pace to next year exceed the capacity of the community's two California-fed pipelines.
In addition, with demand rising for output from California refineries, which supply almost all of Las Vegas' petroleum fuel needs, officials worry that those refineries will, by 2020, run 35 percent shy of the crude oil needed to meet customer demand.
Those warnings were delivered to a Clark County-backed panel of government and business leaders looking at ways to increase fuel imports to Southern Nevada and boosted the group's interest in fuel sources outside Southern California.
