One killed on Las Vegas Strip, gunman barricades self: report

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AFP
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One killed on Las Vegas Strip, gunman barricades self: report

WASHINGTON: One person was killed Saturday and another wounded in a shooting on the busy Las Vegas strip as police surrounded a bus in which a suspect was reportedly barricaded, local media reported.

Police tweeted that a section of South Las Vegas Boulevard remained closed "due to a barricade subject on bus," adding: "Please avoid the area."

Aerial photos showed police vehicles surrounding a long, white two-story bus, and witnesses tweeted that police were using loudspeakers to negotiate with someone inside the vehicle.

"The shooting incident happened on the bus," Las Vegas Metro Police spokesman Larry Hadfield told USA Today. "We had one single shooting incident with two victims. Both were transported to the trauma center and one is deceased."

It was not immediately clear whether the incident was connected to a robbery nearby in which as many as three robbers wearing animal masks -- one tweet showed a person wearing a pink pig mask -- used sledgehammers to break into a jewelry case in a store in the high-end Bellagio Hotel.

 The suspects in that incident wore black suits or tuxedos, police Lieutenant Carlos Hank told the Las Vegas Journal-Review. 

"It´s like a movie," he said. "It´s just crazy."

Police attributed initial reports of an active shooter to people hearing the sound of the glass in jewelry cases being broken. 

The luxury resort was briefly put on lockdown, and at least one person was taken into custody.