Somehow, I managed to mess the shocking news that a backpack wielding terrorist detonated his dastardly device at Las Vegas’ Luxor Hotel early this morning.
Now that I’ve finally stumbled on the story, it
turns out the perpetrator was not a terrorist at all, nor did he have a backpack.
A device left in a casino parking garage exploded early Monday, killing a man who tried to pick it up off the top of his car, authorities said. The device exploded shortly after 4 a.m. on the second floor of a parking garage behind the Luxor hotel-casino, said Officer Bill Cassell, a police spokesman. He declined to describe the device, but said initial reports that it was inside a backpack were wrong.
The blast was not a terrorist act but an apparent murder of a man who worked at a business inside the hotel, he said, adding that the case was being investigated as “a homicide with an unusual weapon.” No threat had been made against the Luxor, Cassell said. “We believe the victim of this event was the intended target,” Cassell said. He said another person who was with the man narrowly escaped injury.
Obviously, though, it could have been terrorism. That is, there is nothing to prevent someone from carrying a backpack into a hotel, filling said backpack with explosives, and detonating it.
Indeed, I’m pleasantly surprised that we have not had a spate of suicide bombers, Islamist or otherwise. Presumably, that’s a function of it being hard to find people in this country willing to blow themselves up. It’s surely not because of tight security; the necessary countermeasures would be unthinkable.
