A disturbed Las Vegas man fatally shot himself Sunday at a casino buffet that had revoked his lifetime of free meals, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
John Noble, 53, mailed the newspaper an obsessive testimonial against the M Resort Spa Casino in nearby Henderson, where the man claimed officials had wrongfully banned him from the premises after female employees accused him of giving them unwanted attention.
Noble turned over 270 pages of documents relating to his case and a two-hour DVD detailing his struggles in a package that arrived the day after his suicide, the Review-Journal reported.
Authorities in the area received word of a car on fire in the casino’s parking garage at 4:50 p.m. Sunday, according to a release from the Henderson Police Department. But just as the M’s security staff extinguished the small blaze, gunshots were reported in the casino’s buffet restaurant, police said.
Cops discovered Noble dead with a single self-inflicted wound. Two people, including one who was hospitalized, sustained minor injuries in the incident, cops said.
It was the tragic culmination of Noble’s failed struggle to regain his standing at the casino, which awarded him free food privileges in 2010 for being an M “biggest winner” but exiled him three years later, the newspaper reported.
“Nobody will help me,” Noble says in a portion of the DVD that the newspaper posted. “You’ve got to fight for what you believe in, and I believe I was unjustifiably kicked out.”
Noble previously threatened suicide Easter Sunday 2013 and allegedly stalked an M employee, according to documents he sent to the paper. Casino officials had forbidden him from coming to the M three weeks before that incident, and Noble spent three days in a state psychiatric ward afterwards.
Upon his release, Noble continued his crusade, taking to Facebook to share M workers’ personal information and complain about his plight, his still-existing profile shows.
A representative for the M didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment early Tuesday. But the M’s vice president of marketing, Scotty Rutledge, told the Review-Journal that the casino was providing grief counseling to employees. He declined to comment further, citing a police investigation and a casino policy not to speak on incidents involving customers.
To the end, Noble apparently thought he could win over buffet workers to his cause.
“That’s the trouble — people do not get involved,” he says in the video. “That’s why this world is so screwed up. Have a little decency, people. Some people are reaching out for help and they don’t get it.”
