The high-powered guns were scattered around the room on an upper floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. One of the firearms, a rifle outfitted with a scope, was near a window, its barrel pointed toward the popular Vegas Strip.
But this was 2014, three years before Stephen Paddock used a suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay to stock an array of guns and carry out the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds of others at a country music festival.
That first room with the rifle next to the window had been occupied by a felon, Kye Aaron Dunbar, who, like Paddock, had taken the guns upstairs in baggage.
The Dunbar case, which attracted little public attention at the time, is now being raised by lawyers for victims of last year's massacre who are suing MGM Resorts International, owner of the Mandalay Bay, for negligence. For Paddock's victims, the Dunbar case shows that the hotel did not do enough to prevent guests from taking an arsenal of weapons to the hotel and that the tragedy that unfolded one year ago was foreseeable.
Dunbar never used the firearms at the hotel. But the Las Vegas police, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigated the case after a housekeeper discovered the weapons. Counterterrorism officials found no evidence of terrorism but alerted security officials at other hotels in the city, as well as law enforcement agencies, that Dunbar was able to get a half-dozen guns up to his room.
Mandalay Bay argues that the Dunbar case is irrelevant to the Paddock attack. The company says it could not have prevented Paddock's actions.
Confronted by lawsuits, MGM has adopted a hardball legal approach to try to block the victims from recovering any money from the company. The cornerstone of MGM's argument is that a little-known federal law passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks shields companies from liability for casualties from acts of terrorism if they employed anti-terrorism technologies and services that carry a special designation from the Department of Homeland Security.
Paddock had no known political motive for perpetrating his horrendous deed, and homeland security officials have so far not deemed the attack an act of terrorism, though the department says the matter is under review. Nonetheless, MGM argues that the massacre qualifies as an act of terrorism because the 2002 federal law carries an expansive definition that essentially labels any mass killing committed on U.S. soil as a terrorist act.
Because of that -- and because the security firm hired for the festival had been awarded the special homeland security designation under a law commonly referred to as the Safety Act -- MGM says it should be granted immunity from damages under the law and should not be forced to pay compensation for injuries suffered by concertgoers.
However the courts ultimately rule, the fallout may be profound. If MGM's strategy succeeds, it could open up a safe harbor for owners of NFL stadiums, office buildings, shopping centers and other gathering places that possess the homeland security designation, shielding them from paying damages to people hurt during a mass casualty attack.
It would also mean that the victims in Las Vegas -- and victims of future attacks -- could be left with fewer places to turn to for compensation for lost wages, medical bills and burial expenses.
At a hearing in Las Vegas last week, a federal district judge, Richard Boulware, made clear to lawyers for MGM and the victims that there are limits to the liability protections afforded by the Safety Act.
"It doesn't seem to me to be intended to essentially give blanket immunity," the judge said, "to anyone who may be connected to the act."
MGM officials declined to comment on whether security procedures were changed at Mandalay Bay after Dunbar's arrest, saying they never discuss such details. The hotel had a no-guns policy at the time and still does today. It characterized Dunbar's case as in no way comparable to Paddock's, saying no evidence ever emerged that Dunbar intended to do anything other than use his weapons at a shooting range and that the judge who sentenced him "did not believe he planned to use them to commit a violent crime."
Although it is not illegal to bring guns into a hotel room in Nevada, it was for Dunbar. He pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon and was sentenced to 40 months in prison after a judge accepted his account that he had only intended to use the weapons at a local shooting range and that he was not involved in terrorism.
A Section on 09/29/2018