Visitors to the MGM National Harbor casino in Maryland experienced frightening moments Saturday night when a series of bangs rang out from near the entrance. People scattered, rushing for the exits, believing there was an active shooter situation. Fortunately, the noise turned out to be fireworks and may be linked to the theft of casino chips.
Police have been hesitant to confirm the possible relationship, but an undetermined number of casino chips were stolen from MGM National Harbor and is thought that the fireworks could have been set off as a diversion to take attention away from the gaming tables.
“I don’t want to go that far to say it was coordinated, because this could have been a series of events that some opportunist decided to take advantage of, or it very well could have been the same people who triggered the fire alarm, who set off some fireworks, and then subsequently made some thefts,” Prince George’s County Police Chief Malik Aziz told WTOP News.
It doesn’t sound like the chip theft, related or not, was overly serious as far as thefts go. What does have people talking, however, was how chaotic the situation was. Nobody knew what was going on. Get Up DC co-anchor Tony Perkins was at the casino at the time with his wife and two friends and said that people thought there was a shooter in the building.
He criticized MGM National Harbor for not communicating with guests, calling the situation “chaos, with very little or conflicting information given to patrons.”
Perkins said that he found out fairly soon that it was just fireworks, but it was only because he was able to flag down a police officer. He added that the casino made no announcement until about 20 minutes after the incident was over. On top of that, Perkins said that an MGM staffer told his friends that there was a fire.
On his show Monday morning, Perkins said that MGM National Harbor needs to better prepare itself for active shooter situations.
Former reporter Margaret Moore Kellett was also at the casino that night and supported Perkins’ and others’ accounts of a chaotic scene.
“All of a sudden, we saw people running,” Moore Kellett told WTOP. “An enormous crowd of people running towards the door.”
And that was part of what made the situation frightening. So many people were storming towards the exits (and many others were trying to enter, not knowing that anything was going on), that it was tough to find one’s way out.
“Another couple was standing there and we understood that it was a bomb threat and an active shooter,” Moore Kellett said, illustrating again how confused everyone was.
