Casino industry urged to ‘ante up’ for victims

A survivor and a family member of a victim from other shootings also attended the evening meeting: Patricia Maisch and Anita Busch.

The casino and gaming industry should donate more to victims and survivors of the Oct. 1 shooting, they said.

More than $16 million has been raised for Las Vegas shooting victims and families. If the Las Vegas Victims Fund were to match the same proportion of payments paid out to the 299 victims and their families in Orlando, Florida, following the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016, then the fund would need at least $560 million.

“The gaming industry has seen consistent year-to-year growth. In 2015, it broke the $70 billion barrier and has been climbing,” said Busch, whose cousin, Micayla Medek, was killed in the 2012 movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado.

“One casino owner boasts a net worth of $37.5 billion. Another has a net worth of $3.3 billion,” she said. “Vegas and Nevada were built on odds and on risks. What are the odds to your industry if you choose not to take care of victims — who were your guests?”

She said the industry and Las

Vegas can either “forever be known as compassionate heroes who did the right thing” or as “villains” who chose to abandon the same people who helped to build their fortunes.

“Sin City needs to do the right thing and they need to do it right now,” she said, adding that any money that is going toward a possible memorial should instead go to victims’ families and survivors.

Maisch helped to stop Tucson, Arizona shooter Jared Loughner in 2011 by wrestling away a fresh magazine of bullets as he tried to reload. Loughner killed six people and injured 13, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Nicole Raz