MGM Grand plays 911 recording

MGM Resorts International allowed a reporter to listen to the recording of a 911 call made by a hotel security officer last year, summoning help for a stagehand who had fallen almost 40 feet inside an MGM Grand showroom. The firm did not give the Review-Journal a copy of the tape, out of respect for the family of the victim, who died.

"Tragic" is how MGM Resorts spokesman Alan Feldman again characterized the accident on May 20, 2009, which led to the death of Vicente Rodriguez, 20, a UNLV student who made money on the side as a stage rigger.

The night he fell, he was working for Rhino Las Vegas, a subcontractor that was packing up equipment for the Tom Jones show, which had finished an engagement at the hotel's Hollywood Theater.

MGM lawyers permitted staff to play the recording on Friday, to prove that the hotel had dialed 911, per company policy, even though the Metropolitan Police Department has no record of the call.

Gordon Absher, another MGM spokesman, said it was important to remove the erroneous suspicion, which he called "ridiculous," that the hotel had bypassed the 911 system.

In the call, which lasts less than a minute, the security officer immediately identified the emergency as medical in nature, which caused the 911 dispatcher to transfer the call to a related center that dispatches ambulances and fire vehicles.

"Can you send paramedics to us, to MGM Grand, and the Hollywood Theater?" the hotel security officer calmly asks the second dispatcher. "One of the technicians fell off the catwalks, and he's not breathing."

The rest of the conversation covers where the paramedics should go once they arrive at the Strip hotel. The Metropolitan Police Department has no record of the call because its 911 center does not log calls that are immediately handed off to the fire-medical dispatch center, a police spokesman explained.

When Marychris Rodriguez, the victim's mother, went to the police department's communication center in June to obtain the record of the May 2009 call, she has said, no one informed her the 911 center would not record a medical call.

She obtained only the record of a nonemergency 311 call the hotel placed about a half hour after her son's fatal accident. At that point he had already been transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Rodriguez recently filed paperwork with the fire-medical dispatch center to obtain its record of the 911 call. She described the process of extracting records from the center and from the private ambulance company as an "archaeological excavation" because of legal requirements to protect patient privacy.

The federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration is reviewing how Nevada OSHA handled the investigation of Vicente Rodriguez's fatal accident.

Rhino and the MGM paid less than $24,000 in fines for unsafe work conditions that contributed to the accident.

The mother has produced copies of e-mail correspondence with Rhino, in which the Rhino representative agreed Vicente Rodriguez would not be assigned to do 'high" rigging, which entails using a safety harness and working above the theater floor. No one has yet explained why her son was sent to work up high, she maintains.

But Nevada's workers' compensation law prevents the victim's family from suing Rhino or the MGM for wrongful death, according to two lawyers who were consulted by relatives.

Contact reporter Joan Whitely at jwhitely@review journal.com or 702-383-0268.