Southeastern Connecticut casino executives were traveling Monday to a gaming conference in Las Vegas.

Major event still going on despite mass shootings

Southeastern Connecticut casino executives were traveling Monday to a gaming conference in Las Vegas, the city where the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history occurred Sunday night.

The American Gaming Association, which is hosting its annual Global Gaming Expo, known as G2E, announced it was “closely monitoring the horrific events” and was going ahead with plans to open the fourday conference Monday at the Sands Expo and Convention Center.

The conference typically draws some 26,000 visitors.

“Most of our team left this morning for the conference,” Ashley Polo, a Foxwoods Resort Casino spokeswoman, said via email Monday.

She said the Foxwoods contingent includes Felix Rappaport, the casino’s president and chief executive officer, who emailed Monday that he was in Idaho.

Jennifer Ballester, a spokeswoman for Mohegan Sun’s parent, Mohegan Gaming & Entertainment, said executives from all of MGE’s properties were attending the conference.

“Many are traveling to Vegas at this time,” she emailed. “The few that were there are safe and were not in attendance at the horrific event.”

Chris Wilks, a vice president with The Hartmann Group, an Old Saybrook-based gaming consulting firm, was in Las Vegas Sunday prior to attending G2E. He was at another hotel when “the news hit” that the gunshots had been fired from Mandalay Bay.

“Mood here is very somber,” Wilks, of Westerly, wrote in an email late Monday morning. “Looks like a military zone on the streets.”

Shortly after noon, he wrote: “Things have definitely calmed down over the last hour.”