A suspect finally surrenders to SWAT officers after being barricaded for many hours on a bus after a fatal shooting in the vehicle earlier today along the Strip outside the Cosmopolitan Hotel on Saturday, March 25, 2017.
Monday, March 27, 2017 | 3:17 p.m.
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Roland Cardenas
Surveillance images from inside a double-decker bus where two men were shot Saturday on the Strip show the moment the suspect fired without provocation at passengers exiting at a stop, according to a Metro Police arrest report.
The victims and Rolando Cardenas, 55, did not know each other and didn’t interact with each other during Saturday’s ride, police said.
One of the victims was killed and the other wounded.
Cardenas, whom police described as being “delusional” during SWAT negotiations, told detectives he fired to scare but not kill a man who had been sitting next to him, according to the report.
He said he was intimidated by the other passenger, who threatened to beat him up, police said. The report said there was no indication the exchange occurred.
During a subsequent standoff, which closed the Strip from Flamingo Road to Harmon Avenue for several hours, Cardenas grabbed a SWAT robot that officers sent onto the bus and threw it out a window before firing two more rounds, police said. He later told detectives he thought the robot was a bomb.
The shooting happened about 10:50 a.m. near the Cosmopolitan. When officers arrived, they found bystanders tending to 57-year-old Gary Breitling, who had been shot in the chest. His wife was on the bus with him, police said.
Breitling, of Sidney, Montana, and another man, who was shot in the stomach, were taken to University Medical Center, where Breitling died. The other man was expected to recover, police said.
Cardenas threw his .40-caliber gun out the window and surrendered about 2:45 p.m., police said. He told detectives he’d been unemployed for about three years and recently became homeless.
Cardenas is scheduled to appear in court Wednesday morning on murder, attempted murder, weapon and other counts, court records show.
