Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

Man’s gun misfired before shooting 2 Vegas casino executives at company picnic

Wrobel arrested in Texas

John Locher / Assocaited Press

Las Vegas police Capt. Robert Plummer speaks during a news conference on the arrest of Anthony Wrobel, Thursday, April 19, 2018, in Las Vegas. Wrobel, a suspect in the fatal shooting of a casino executive and the wounding of another, was arrested Thursday in Texas.

The first pull of Anthony Wrobel’s gun did not produce a bullet and the second fired an accidental round to the ground, according to a Metro Police warrant.

The document provides insight into the investigation of last weekend shooting of two Venetian executives at Sunset Park. Wrobel, 42, was a longtime table-games dealer who became disgruntled with the company, killing Mia Banks, 54, and wounding Hector Rodriguez, police said.

When serving a SWAT search warrant at Wrobel’s house, detectives discovered it was mostly abandoned. On a coffee table, a single sheet of paper “expressing the writer’s anger at Venetian Management” was found, police said.

Inside Wrobel’s dark-colored Dodge Charger, which he ditched at nearby McCarran International Airport, a revolver, ammunition and magazines were found, police said. He left the car minutes after the shooting to flee town in a 1998 silver Cadillac he planted at the airport three days before the suspected crime.

Wrobel was arrested Thursday morning at a rest stop in the Texas panhandle.

On Sunday, Wrobel drove to the picnic, which was winding down about 6 p.m., and approached a co-worker, asking if the “bosses” were still there, police said. He was directed to a gazebo area where the victims were sitting.

“Wrobel approached Banks and Rodriguez and stood next to the picnic table” before pulling out a gun, police said.

Multiple 911 callers, some who witnessed the shooting, identified Wrobel as the shooter by name, police said. At Sunrise Hospital Medical Center where Banks died, Rodriguez told detectives that Wrobel shot them.

Seven minutes later, surveillance images at the airport caught Wrobel arriving and getting into his getaway car, police said. He was gone by the time officers arrived.

The search for the suspect intensified Tuesday when the FBI filed a warrant stating that they believe Wrobel had left Las Vegas.

After his arrest on Tuesday, Metro said they knew for certain that Wrobel was at Cedar City, Utah, where he stole license plates off a vehicle shortly after the shooting. But they were trying to determine his whereabouts between the shooting and the arrest, and where he was possibly heading.

Around 3 a.m., in a Texas rest stop next to a highway, an Oldham County Sheriff’s Office conducting routine patrol ran the plates of a silver Cadillac and determined they were stolen.

When backup arrived and deputies approached a sleeping Wrobel, he grabbed a 9 mm gun, but quickly dropped it. Soon, they learned the man was wanted about 700 miles away on a federal murder and attempted murder warrant.