Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

Man accused of shooting tourists in Las Vegas bus gets public defender

Bus Shooter Initial Appearance

AP Photo/John Locher

Rolando Cardenas, right, makes an initial court appearance Wednesday, March 29, 2017, at the Regional Justice Center. Cardenas has been charged with killing one passenger and wounding another on a double-decker bus last weekend on the Las Vegas Strip.

Bus Shooting Suspect Initial Appearance

Rolando Cardenas, left, waits to make an initial court appearance Wednesday, March 29, 2017, at the Regional Justice Center. Cardenas has been charged with killing one passenger and wounding another on a double-decker bus last weekend on the Las Vegas Strip. Launch slideshow »

Bus Shooter on Strip

SWAT officers stage as they surround a suspect barricaded on a bus after a fatal shooting in the vehicle earlier today along the Strip outside the Cosmopolitan Hotel on Saturday, March 25, 2017. Launch slideshow »

A man accused of shooting two tourists, fatally wounding one, on a public bus Saturday on the Strip made his first court appearance Wednesday morning and was assigned a public defender.

Appearing in Las Vegas Justice Court, Rolando Cardenas, 55, stood briefly as Justice of the Peace Cynthia Cruz asked if he understood the seven felony charges against him and set a preliminary hearing date for April 27.

Dressed in a blue short-sleeve Clark County Detention Center T-shirt and matching pants with his hands chained loosely to his torso, Cardenas spoke clearly in affirming he understood charges of murder with use of a firearm, attempted murder with use of a firearm, burglary while in possession of a firearm and four counts of discharging a gun within a vehicle. He said he could not afford a private attorney, and no bail was set.

Public defender Will Ewing said questions remain about Cardenas’ mental health and competency. Ewing said he had not seen surveillance video from the bus.

Metro Police said Gary Breitling, 57, of Sidney, Montana, was fatally wounded after Cardenas fired two rounds from the back of a Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada bus Saturday morning that had stopped in front of the Cosmopolitan.

Passengers were getting off the bus about 10:45 a.m. when Cardenas open fired “for no apparent reason,” Metro Officer Larry Hadfield said in a statement. Another man, Jason Ellis, was shot in the stomach but was expected to make a full recovery, police said.

Cardenas said he felt intimated by a man “with a large stature” who sat down next to him with two women on the upper level of the double-decker bus and threatened him, according to a police report. The report said there was no indication the exchange occurred.

When the trio stood up to get off the bus, Cardenas pulled a .40-caliber handgun from a backpack and fired into the seats in front of him in an attempt to scare them, police said. The bullets passed through the floor and hit Breitling and Ellis, who were departing the bus from a stairwell, the report said.

Cardenas refused to get off the bus for more than four hours, police said, closing Las Vegas Boulevard between Flamingo Road and Tropicana Boulevard as Metro’s SWAT and crisis response teams barricaded the area and negotiated with him from outside the bus.

During the standoff with Metro officers, Cardenas fired two additional rounds and threw a police robot out of a window because he thought it was a bomb, according to the report. Cardenas eventually tossed the gun out the window about 3:15 p.m. and surrendered, police said.

Photographs taken by the Las Vegas Sun showed Cardenas wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, jeans, flip flops and a light orange cap, being hauled off by heavily-armed SWAT officers wearing helmets and carrying shields shortly after he left the bus. Northbound traffic reopened soon after Cardenas surrendered and the rest of the road closures were lifted about 5:20 p.m.

Cardenas told detectives he had been unemployed for about three years and recently became homeless, the police report said.