Many of you have probably seen on the news that a car went through the main entrance of Edgewater today killing 2, sending 5 to the hospital, and injuring (minor) another 5 or 6.
I was playing at the 100%+ bank of machines near the escalator when there was a giant boom at 9:30 am. From the machines I couldn't see exactly what had happened ... only a cloud of dust over near the main cage. As many of you know, when it rains there are many leaks at the Edgewater. Some of the employees have joked that one day the ceiling was going to rot out and come crashing down -- this was my first thought as to what had happened.
Surprisingly, few people left their machines and headed toward the area. Being in rescue squad many decades ago, I cashed out and walked over to the area expecting to help people get out from fallen ceiling tiles with maybe some minor bumps and bruises. Wrong. Saw a car up against the LAST bank of machines before the table game area. I called 911 to verify that somebody had already called. Several had, but had just said car had gone through glass doors ... operator asked me to repeat how far the car had gone into casino (I estimated 60 to 70 feet). At that point I lost the connection and started toward the car, but came to woman on her back about 5 feet from the car. Stayed with her from that point on until paramedics eventually took over. I could see the driver -- alert and talking to casino security people. Saw one body behind car which security checked and quickly covered with sheet. (News later reported that a second body was under the car just a few feet from me, but with all the junk [broken glass, signage, etc] I did not notice. Most of my attention was on the lady who first wanted to get up (no way with a back and neck injury) and then wanted to go to sleep (head injury?). The woman's friend and I kept her talking and still until the paramedics eventually got to her. (They had done a quick initial triage check with me and then addressed others who were more serious ... and eventually brought a neck brace to stabilize the woman's neck).
The one thing I thought when I saw a car there was the recent Toyota problem. But the car was a Pontiac Vibe. (Many people assumed it had been a Toyota ... so much for Toyota's reputation).
Some thoughts ... Somebody wondered why people didn't get out of the way (the two fatalities were near end of the car's path ... far from the doors). The speed of the car (estimated at 60 to 100 mph) likely made that impossible. In thinking about it, if a large vehicle (eg, 4x4 large pickup or full Hummer) had come through the doors at a slower, but constant speed, there could have been enough vehicle mass to continue through the many banks of slots (news said six banks) but the sound would have been like dominoes falling (crash, crash, crash ...) ... but there was one quick loud crash ... which, from a physics standpoint, relates to a smaller vehicle traveling at high speed to continue that far as it hit the various machines. I cringe in thinking what would have happened if the vehicle had gone on through that last bank of machines -- it was headed right for the table games along the wall near the restrooms.
From what I saw, the security people at Edgewater acted immediately. I saw several officers checking with the driver, checking on the person behind the car (and quickly covering the body when it was obvious it was fatality), checking with me multiple times to make sure the woman I was with was breathing OK and her status, handing me several blankets in case the woman got cold, bringing the triage paramedic to show him where the woman was, etc. (As stated though, I couldn't see much that was going on back toward the front door ... while the aisle behind me back toward the slot club was clear, the car, fallen machines, and debris blocked much of the view in the other three directions). A few minutes after the paramedics took over to put the neck brace on the woman I had been with, security (or others from Edgewater) put up large, black partitions to give privacy to the accident scene from the rest of the casino ... and had emptied the table game area and yellow taped it off.
Anyway, certainly the most unusual (and, by far the saddest) day at a casino.
Tom from Indy