Officials investigate the scene of an explosion in a Las Vegas parking lot that killed a man. Isaac Brekken / AP
Vegas bombing victim’s past investigated
Casino worker was in U.S. illegally, had two girlfriends, his cousin says
Updated: 3:02 p.m. ET May 10, 2007
LAS VEGAS - Family members of a man killed in an explosion on the Las Vegas Strip were planning to bring his body back to Mexico while investigators looked into his background for clues.
Willebaldo Dorantes Antonio, 24, died Monday after a homemade bomb on his car exploded as he picked it up inside the Luxor hotel-casino's parking garage. He was leaving work at a hot dog stand and was with his girlfriend, who was not injured.
Investigators have said they believe he was the intended victim of the blast, though they have not offered a reason he was targeted.
"He was not part of any gang," Max Dorantes, a cousin, said Wednesday. "He was a working guy, a very good guy. He worked two jobs. He was one of my good friends."
Dorantes, 22, of Newport, Ore., said his cousin had been in the U.S. illegally for about three years and had two girlfriends — one a co-worker at the hot dog stand and another who left their 6-month-old son with relatives at home in Mexico when she traveled to Las Vegas about two weeks ago. He said he was not sure if the women knew about each other.
Tom Mangan, a senior agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said investigators were reviewing Dorantes Antonio's dating relationships, his immigration status, his travels between Mexico and the U.S. and his work.
"The questions are: Who would want to do this? Why this guy? And why this method?" Mangan said. "That information is going to come out once we delve into the details about this guy."
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Two arrested in Las Vegas Strip bombing probe
By Ken Ritter
Associated Press
9:12 a.m. May 11, 2007
LAS VEGAS — Two people have been arrested after one man was questioned as a "person of interest" in a deadly Las Vegas Strip parking lot bombing, police said Friday.
Word of the arrests came after one man was detained on false identification charges and his home was searched for clues in the bombing that killed an immigrant worker at a hot dog stand, police said.
Police said a second person also was taken into custody and scheduled a 10:30 a.m. news conference, but released no further information.
The identity of the man who was detained was not made public after he was taken into custody shortly after 7 p.m. Thursday. He was driving a vehicle not far from his home south of the Las Vegas Strip, said Officer Bill Cassell, a Las Vegas police spokesman.
Police searched the man's home late Thursday "looking for anything tied to the case, including components that could be used to make an explosive device or any items that could tie him or others to the Luxor homicide," Cassell said.
The police spokesman would not say what led police to the man, whom he said was sought on local warrants for possession of false identification and possession of materials to make false identification.
"He was detained for questioning," Cassell said. "He will be arrested on the warrants."
The development came hours after police released blurry freeze-frame images of a car and appealed for public help to find it and a person who placed the deadly bomb on the victim's car early Monday in a parking structure behind the Luxor hotel-casino.
Cassell would not say Friday whether police found the car. He said the man who was taken into custody was not driving it.
Police identified what they described as the "suspect vehicle" from surveillance video shot at 1:14 a.m. and at 2:28 a.m. in parking garages behind the Luxor and neighboring Excalibur hotel-casino.
Surveillance cameras did not capture the bomber or the 4:11 a.m. blast, police Lt. Lewis Roberts said, and the license plate of what appears to be a silver two-door sedan is not seen.
Roberts said Thursday that police were still trying to determine a motive for the explosion that mortally wounded 24-year-old Willebaldo Dorantes Antonio and blew a 12-inch hole in his 1996 Dodge Stratus. Dorantes Antonio died at a hospital about two hours later of a head injury.
A woman who was with Dorantes Antonio escaped injury. Dorantes Antonio's relatives have described her as a girlfriend, while authorities refer to her as a co-worker at the Nathan's Famous hot dog stand inside the pyramid-shaped Luxor.
Police have said Dorantes Antonio was the intended target and the bombing was not a terrorist act or a mob hit. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said the motion-activated bomb blew up with the force of a stick of dynamite. Authorities have not disputed reports that the device was hidden inside a cup.
"The way the device was placed, the way it was detonated, and the death of our victim leads us to believe he was the intended target and no one else," Roberts said.
"But we won't know until we know what he's all about whether he had any enemies out of the country, and whether he had enemies when he got to the country," Roberts said. "And not only him, but the people he was with."
Roberts declined to say what police and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents learned about Dorantes Antonio's relationship with three illegal immigrants arrested at his house after the bombing.
Two men were from Mexico and one was from Guatemala, said Lori Haley an ICE regional spokeswoman in Laguna Niguel, Calif. She said the Guatemalan also was sought on a probation violation in Newport, Ore., where he was convicted of first-degree sexual assault.
The woman with whom Dorantes Antonio worked at the hot dog stand also was in ICE custody, pending deportation to Guatemala, Haley said.
Police Detain 2 In Vegas Bombing
(CBS) LAS VEGAS Two people were being held in connection with a deadly bombing at a Los Vegas Strip parking lot, police said Friday.
One man was questioned as a "person of interest" after being detained on false identification charges, and his home was searched for clues in the bombing that killed an immigrant worker at a hot dog stand on Monday, police said.
The homemade bomb had been left on the victim's car at Luxor hotel-casino's parking garage and went off after he picked it up.
Police said a second person also was taken into custody but released no further information.
The identity of the man who was detained was not made public after he was taken into custody Thursday evening.
Police searched the man's home late Thursday "looking for anything tied to the case, including components that could be used to make an explosive device or any items that could tie him or others to the Luxor homicide," Cassell said.
Police would not say what led them to the man.
"He was detained for questioning," Cassell said. "He will be arrested on the warrants."
The development came hours after police released blurry freeze-frame images of a car and appealed for public help to find it and the person who placed the deadly bomb.
Police Lt. Lewis Roberts said Thursday that police were still trying to determine a motive for the explosion that mortally wounded 24-year-old Willebaldo Dorantes Antonio. Dorantes Antonio died at a hospital about two hours later of a head injury.
A woman who was with Dorantes Antonio escaped injury.
Police have said Dorantes Antonio was the intended target and the bombing was not a terrorist act or a mob hit. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said the motion-activated bomb blew up with the force of a stick of dynamite.
Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents were involved in the initial investigation.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. )
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Family of Las Vegas Strip bombing victim puzzled by killing
By KEN RITTER
Associated Press Writer
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Puzzled family members made plans Wednesday to return the body of a man killed in a Las Vegas Strip bombing to Mexico as investigators looked into his background for a motive.
"They don't understand the killing or the way of the killing," said Johannes Jacome Cid, consul in charge at the Mexican Consulate in Las Vegas, who is advising the relatives of Willebaldo Dorantes Antonio.
Dorantes Antonio, 24, was killed early Monday when a homemade bomb left on this roof of his car at the Luxor hotel-casino's parking garage exploded as he picked it up.
Jacome Cid was helping the family handle donations to a bank account to transport Dorantes Antonio's body back to the town of San Jose Miahuatlan, in the Mexican state of Puebla.
Max Dorantes, a cousin helping make funeral plans, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that he and other relatives had no idea who left the small bomb that killed Dorantes Antonio as he left work at a Nathan's Famous hot dog stand with a girlfriend. The woman escaped injury.
"He was not part of any gang," Max Dorantes said. "He was a working guy, a very good guy. He worked two jobs. He was one of my good friends."
Max Dorantes, 22, of Newport, Ore., confirmed that his cousin was in the U.S. illegally and had two girlfriends - one a co-worker at Nathan's and the other who left their 6-month-old son with relatives at home in Mexico when she traveled to Las Vegas about two weeks ago.
Max Dorantes said he was not sure if the two women knew about each other.
Investigators, who have said they believe Dorantes Antonio was the intended target of the blast, said the explosion was not a terrorist act or a mob hit.
Tom Mangan, a senior special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said investigators were fitting together the puzzle of Dorantes Antonio's dual dating relationships, his immigration status, his travels between Mexico and the U.S. and his work.
"The questions are: Who would want to do this? Why this guy? And why this method?" Mangan said. "That information is going to come out once we delve into the details about this guy."
Authorities say the motion-activated device exploded with the force of a stick of dynamite, mortally wounding him in the head and blowing a 12-inch hole in the 1996 Dodge Stratus that Max Dorantes sold him in November. Dorantes Antonio died about two hours later at a hospital.
Police have been reviewing surveillance videotapes of the parking garage to try to identify who left the device and when.
Police have not identified the woman who was walking with Dorantes Antonio when he reached his car, but said she was cooperating with investigators. Max Dorantes said she was from Guatemala and had been dating Dorantes Antonio for about six months.
Willebaldo Dorantes Antonio had been in the United States illegally for about three years, his cousin said. He worked nights at Nathan's Famous hot dogs inside the pyramid-shaped Luxor hotel-casino, and days at Quiznos sandwich shop inside the neighboring Excalibur.
Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested three suspected illegal immigrants at Dorantes Antonio's house after the explosion, said Virginia Kice, regional spokeswoman for the federal agency in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Two men were from Mexico and one was from Guatemala, Kice said.
Frank Bonnano, chief executive of the Nathan's franchise owner, Fifth Avenue Restaurant Group in Las Vegas, said he believed Dorantes Antonio provided residency documentation when he was hired.
Quiznos manager Chris Spanna said Dorantes Antonio submitted a Social Security card and a required Las Vegas police health card when he was hired three weeks ago. Spanna said he did not know until Wednesday that Dorantes Antonio was not in the United States legally.
Funeral arrangements were being handled by Nevada Funeral Service in Las Vegas, which said plans and services were private.
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Police release blurry image of car in Las Vegas Strip bombing
By KEN RITTER
Associated Press Writer
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Police released blurry freeze-frame images Thursday of a car that investigators think was used to shuttle a deadly bomb to a Las Vegas Strip resort where it exploded and killed a young illegal immigrant who had gotten off work at an all-night hot dog stand.
"This is the vehicle that we believe is our suspect vehicle," Lt. Lewis Roberts said as he appealed for the public's help in finding the car seen on surveillance video at 1:14 a.m. and at 2:28 a.m. Monday in a parking garage behind the Luxor hotel-casino.
"We know the car was there twice, and the second time it parked next to our victim's vehicle," Roberts said. "We can't really tell if anyone gets out of the vehicle, but it stays there for a little while and then backs up and leaves."
Surveillance cameras did not capture the bomber or the 4:11 a.m. blast, Roberts said. The license plate of what Robert said appears to be a silver two-door sedan is not seen.
The homicide commander said he expected progress would be slow in the case, which involves local, state and federal agencies in the U.S. and Mexico.
"At this point, we don't have a definitive motive for what happened here," Roberts said. "We have a victim that's a fairly young Hispanic male working at Nathan's hot dogs (who) ends up being a victim of a homicide - a horrible homicide - and at this point, we don't know why."
The explosion mortally wounded 24-year-old Willebaldo Dorantes Antonio and blew a 12-inch hole in his 1996 Dodge Stratus. Dorantes Antonio died at a hospital about two hours later of a head injury, the Clark County coroner said.
A woman who was with Dorantes Antonio escaped injury. Dorantes Antonio's relatives have described her as a girlfriend, while authorities refer to her as a co-worker at the Nathan's Famous hot dog stand inside the pyramid-shaped Luxor.
Police have said Dorantes Antonio was the intended target and the bombing was not a terrorist act or a mob hit. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said the motion-activated bomb blew up with the force of a stick of dynamite. Authorities have not disputed reports that the device was hidden inside a cup.
"The way the device was placed, the way it was detonated, and the death of our victim leads us to believe he was the intended target and no one else," Roberts said.
"But we won't know until we know what he's all about whether he had any enemies out of the country, and whether he had enemies when he got to the country," Roberts said. "And not only him, but the people he was with."
Family members were raising money through the Mexican Consulate in Las Vegas to return Dorantes Antonio's body to the town of San Jose Miahuatlan, in the Mexican state of Puebla.
A cousin, 22-year-old Max Dorantes of Newport, Ore., on Wednesday characterized Dorantes Antonio as a hardworking man who was in the U.S. illegally, worked two jobs, and had two girlfriends.
Besides the Nathan's co-worker, whom Max Dorantes said was from Guatemala, a woman with whom Dorantes Antonio had a 6-month-old son arrived in Las Vegas from Mexico about two weeks ago. The child remained with relatives in Mexico, Max Dorantes said.
Antonio Dorantes started a second job about that time. He worked days at a Quiznos inside the Excalibur hotel-casino, sandwich shop manager Chris Spanna said.
Roberts declined to say what police and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents learned about Dorantes Antonio's relationship with three illegal immigrants arrested at his house after the bombing.
Two men were from Mexico and one was from Guatemala, said Lori Haley an ICE regional spokeswoman in Laguna Niguel, Calif. She said the Guatemalan also was sought on a probation violation in Newport, Ore., where he was convicted of first-degree sexual assault.
The woman with whom Dorantes Antonio worked at the hot dog stand also was in ICE custody, pending deportation to Guatemala, Haley said.
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Metro To Release Photos of Luxor Bomb Suspect Vehicle
By Homeland Security NTARC News | May 9, 2007
Las Vegas Eyewitness News is saying Metro will release still pictures of a suspect vehicle in this bombing investigation on Thursday. The pictures will come from the surveillance tape.
There is new information about the man killed in that bomb blast at the Luxor on Monday. Family members confirm the victim’s name. Willebaldo Dorantes-Antonio is from Puebla, Mexico.
The 24-year-old worked at Nathan’s Famous hot dog restaurant in the hotel’s food court. Tuesday morning his family visited the Mexican consulate for help in making arrangements for the funeral. Family members were visibly still shaken over the murder as they walked away from the consulate.
They did not want to go on camera, but told Eyewitness News they are making arrangements for Dorantes-Antonio’s body to be shipped back to his hometown. They hope investigators can find out who set the bomb.
As those arrangements are being made, Metro investigators along with federal agents examined the evidence collected from the Luxor parking garage near the explosion. They will continue to look for who wanted the 24-year-old dead and why.
Dorantes-Antonio had just gotten off work. He and a female friend walked into the upper level of the parking garage around 4 a.m. Police say and sources at the MGM say that Dorantes-Antonio noticed a cup sitting on the roof of his car. When he reached over to pick up, it exploded.
Dorantes-Antonio was badly injured and died a short time later at the hospital. Shrapnel from the bomb hit other nearby cars, but luckily the woman with Dorantes-Antonio was not hurt.
Late Tuesday afternoon, the Clark County coroner reported that Willebaldo-Dorantes died from a penetrating head wound.
ATF special agent Tom Mangan says they learned more about the device. “We are very happy with the post blast investigation with the amount of components we have been able to recover,” Mangan said.
He says investigators pieced together most of the bomb. Sources say it was in a cup sitting on top of Dorantes-Antonio’s car. Mangan confirmed it was detonated by motion, meaning the bomb went off when Dorantes picked up the cup.
ATF special agent Mangan says the components of the device can lead investigators to who put it on the roof of Dorantes-Antonio’s car. “It gives us certain clues to who constructed it. It gives us clues to the way it was made up. The way it was designed.”
ATF agents can actually get fingerprints off parts of the bomb with specialized equipment. Mangan says the bomb blast was equivalent to a stick of dynamite. Pieces from the blast will now be sent to a specialized lab near San Francisco.
Deputy Chief Ted Moody with Metro Police says they believe he was targeted and that they are also reviewing surveillance video.
“There is video in that lot, and we’re still in the process of trying to determine what if anything is contained on those videos will be helpful to us in our investigation,” said Moody.
So far, police aren’t talking about a motive. They say this is still a very active investigation and among other things, they are trying to reconstruct the bomb to get clues.
An autopsy was conducted on Dorantes-Antonio’s body Tuesday morning, but the results from the coroner still aren’t available.
So far, law enforcement agents aren’t saying if they have any suspects.
Source -LasVegasNOW.com
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A Question Recurs: How Safe Is Las Vegas?
By STEVE FRIESS
LAS VEGAS, Aug. 2 — The morning after a gunman opened fire inside the New York-New York Hotel-Casino a month ago, Sylvia Cunningham, a tourist from Dallas, received two text messages from her mother urging her to cut short her annual six-day trip to Las Vegas.
She and her fiancé ignored that advice, but the shooting made her wonder how well the city was prepared to prevent a terrorist attack.
“It did dawn on me after my mom bugged me, but Vegas is probably a pretty easy place for a psycho to do damage,” said Ms. Cunningham, a 27-year-old legal secretary. “Everybody comes and goes as they please. Who would know if that Elvis impersonator were a suicide bomber?”
Casino and law enforcement officials say the Las Vegas Strip is among the safest, most carefully monitored public gathering places in the world. But the city, known internationally as a symbol of American hedonism, has long been considered a likely prime target of terrorists. And two recent violent incidents — the New York-New York shooting and a deadly car bomb explosion at the Luxor Hotel-Casino in May — have gotten the attention not only of tourists but also of security experts.
“We have not had an event here in Las Vegas the equivalent of the events of 9/11 or anything close to that, and that hasn’t been by accident,” said Bill Young, a former sheriff here and now security chief for Station Casinos, owner of 10 casinos in the area. “With all that said, it’s going to be very, very, very difficult to prevent lone criminals who have the intentions of harming themselves and others.”
That was the case at New York-New York shortly after midnight on July 6. Steven F. Zegrean, 51, of Las Vegas is charged with opening fire then with a semiautomatic handgun from a balcony overlooking the casino floor. Four people were wounded, none critically, before four tourists tackled him. In the Luxor explosion, on May 7, the police have accused two men of leaving a homemade bomb in a coffee cup atop the car of a 24-year-old restaurant employee who died in the blast.
The police say Mr. Zegrean was attempting suicide, hoping that officers would kill him. The bombing, they say, was motivated by a dispute over a woman.
Las Vegas was one of four cities cited by the F.B.I. as having received specific credible threats that prompted heightened security on New Year’s Eve in 2003, and some Strip resorts were recorded on videos found in the possession of two men who earlier that year were convicted of being part of a Detroit terror cell. (The convictions were later overturned on the ground that prosecutors had withheld evidence from the defense.) In addition, several of the Sept. 11 hijackers visited Las Vegas before their attacks for what the F.B.I. believes were planning sessions.
The Strip is famous for its video surveillance of nearly every public inch of casino-resorts, scrutiny to which Mr. Young points as a deterrent “for any criminal who does not wish to be caught.” In addition, more than 6,000 private security personnel supplement and train with the police force, said Kathleen Suey, deputy chief in charge of the Police Department’s homeland security division.
Still, more than 40 million tourists visit the city each year, and “there’s really no way of screening that many people without greatly limiting access,” said Christopher E. McGoey, a security consultant who has advised several Las Vegas casinos.
“It’s a vacation place,” Mr. McGoey said. “People don’t want to be walking around with passports or going through metal detectors or screenings. It’s always going to be a relatively soft target.”
In the New York-New York case, Mr. Zegrean had paced the indoor balcony for hours wearing a trench coat before the shooting. One of his tacklers, Justin Lampert, a 24-year-old Iraq war veteran from North Dakota, was surprised that it took tourists to avert a massacre.
“You would’ve thought some security guy would have seen him, since he was wearing a trench coat and it’s 115 degrees outside,” Mr. Lampert said. “I would expect that to stand out in somebody’s mind. They do need to spruce up security. But if they do that, they’ll probably lose some of the income from people who won’t come because of the hassles.”
Las Vegas resorts have been leaders in adopting some new security technology, said Alan Feldman, senior vice president of MGM Mirage, owner of the Luxor, New York-New York and eight other Strip properties. While Mr. Feldman would not discuss many of MGM’s security initiatives, for fear of compromising them, he did note that the company was experimenting with a facial-recognition system that could someday spot people traveling with fake IDs.
In addition, Ms. Suey noted that the homeland security division would add 28 uniformed officers this fall — the police do not disclose the division’s total strength — and that Las Vegas was one of just a dozen cities with an officer working full time at the Department of Homeland Security’s headquarters to relay information on terrorist chatter.
Both recent events were “good exercises for us,” Ms. Suey said.
“When someone places a coffee cup on top of a car,” she said, “that’s not something prior to this that would have caught our attention. Would it now? Absolutely.”
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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