Two dead after murder-suicide at Excalibur

A man and woman were dead after a possible murder-suicide Friday night inside the Excalibur lobby.

Las Vegas police responded to the Strip hotel about 8:30 p.m. after gunfire erupted in the front lobby, officer Laura Meltzer said.

The man died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The woman died at University Medical Center about two hours later, police said.

The hotel remained open, but the lobby was closed as detectives tried to piece together what happened and why.

The woman worked at the hotel as a concierge, homicide Lt. Ray Steiber said. He said investigators did not know the relationship between the pair.

A message posted on the Excalibur's Facebook page about 10:30 p.m. read: "An apparent domestic incident occurred at Excalibur this evening. Local authorities have the matter under control."

A hotel employee, who would not give his name out of fear of being reprimanded, said the woman was working when her boyfriend shot her in the face and turned the gun on himself.

Teenage sisters Choloe and Camille Rogers of Riverside, Calif., said they heard screaming and had to run up the hotel escalators to get away from a mob of people who were fleeing from the gunshots.

San Diego resident Jim Purdy said he checked into the medieval-themed resort about 15 minutes before the shooting.

After he watched some coverage of the mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school in his room, he returned to the lobby to find police everywhere and yellow crime scene tape surrounding the area.

Other tourists walked past the scene apparently oblivious to the carnage that had taken place just a couple of hours before.

Friday was not the first time a high-profile act of violence has erupted along the Strip.

In the summer of 2011, four people were killed in unrelated homicides along Las Vegas Boulevard, including two on pedestrian walkways. In another case, a man fatally punched another man after a confrontation in a bathroom at the now-closed O'Shea's.

In September 2008, a 23-year-old prostitute fatally stabbed another prostitute in the neck in the lobby at Bally's. They were fighting over their pimp.

A year earlier, a man was killed by a homemade bomb blast at the Luxor's parking garage. The bomb had been placed by the ex-boyfriend of the man's girlfriend.

Earlier in 2007, Steven Zegrean opened fire at New York-New York, spraying bullets down on the casino floor and wounding four unsuspecting tourists. Several bystanders tackled him to stop the attack.

He was sentenced to 90 years in prison after being found guilty at trial.