Man arrested after threatening to blow up Strip comedy club, police say
Police said a man was arrested Tuesday for threatening to “blow up the Jimmy Kimmel Theatre” at the Linq Promenade on the Strip last month because the celebrity “owes these guys money.”
Steve Vuiex, 29, admitted to investigators that he made two phone calls to the Caesars Entertainment box office in which the caller said a bomb would explode at the comedy club and it should be evacuated, the Metropolitan Police Department said in a report.
Vuiex was booked Tuesday into the Clark County Detention Center on suspicion of communicating a bomb threat and a parole violation in a separate case.
A spokesperson for Caesars Entertainment, which operates the theater, known as Jimmy Kimmel’s Comedy Club, at 3545 S. Las Vegas Blvd., could not be reached. The comedy club’s namesake is Jimmy Kimmel, a comedian and TV talk show host.
Security officers working for Caesars Entertainment contacted Las Vegas police on Oct. 8 to report that a caller phoned the company’s box office at 8:55 p.m. and said “I will blow up the Jimmy Kimmel Theatre at 9 o’clock and you better watch,” police said.
The person called a second time and said that “a bomb will go off at 9,” according to police.
The caller also said that “a missile is going through” the theater and “the building will be blown up,” according to the report.
When told he was calling the box office, not the theater, the caller said, “Well box office I need you to evacuate at 9 o’clock, these guys are not playing. He owes these guys money and he has not paid, and they are retaliating right now.”
A special response team from Caesars’ security department arrived at the theater and used a K-9 explosives detection dog to sweep inside but found nothing suspicious, according to the police report.
Caesars was able to trace the phone calls to a number and provided police with audio recordings of the calls, police reported.
After a detective called the number, Vuiex returned the call and agreed that the phone number was his, adding that his elderly father also had access to his mobile phone but Vuiex was not able to say when he had the phone himself and soon terminated the call with the detective, the report said.
From the audio recordings, the detective who had just talked to Vuiex believed the voice on them was Vuiex’s, but “his speech was not as clear or concise” as when the detective spoke to him directly, leaving the impression that the voice “sounded as if he was intoxicated or under the influence of some type of drug,” the report said.
On Tuesday, a detective went to meet Vuiex’s parole officer during Vuiex’s scheduled meeting and conducted a recorded interview after informing him of his rights, police said.
Vuiex was arrested after his admission to making both calls, while also explaining that he was trying to pull a prank on his friend who worked at the box office, according to the report.
He faces two counts of communicating a bomb threat, which is a felony. His next court date for a status check is Monday in Las Vegas Justice Court, court records show.
Contact Jeff Burbank at jburbank@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0382. Follow him @JeffBurbank2 on X.