NewsNation

Police: Suspect asked showgirls for photos before stabbing

(NewsNation) — Yoni Barrios, the 32-year-old accused of killing two people and leaving six others injured after stabbing them with a large kitchen knife outside a Las Vegas casino, appeared in court Friday.

He is facing two counts of open murder with a deadly weapon and six counts of attempted murder with a deadly weapon.


Three people were hospitalized in critical condition and another three were in stable condition, according to Las Vegas police, who said they began receiving 911 calls about the stabbings around 11:40 a.m. local time across the street from the Wynn Las Vegas casino and hotel.

According to a new police report released Friday, Barrios arrived in Las Vegas earlier in the week from California expecting to stay with a friend.

When that didn’t work out, Barrios decided to go to the Las Vegas Strip on a bus, where, according to the police report, he was being made fun of and wasn’t being treated as a human.

The arrest report says Barrios did some light job hunting after arriving on the Strip, where he then asked to take a picture with some of the showgirls on the street.

It wasn’t until after asking to take a picture with them wielding the large kitchen knife that he started stabbing.

According to the police report, the women were making fun of him, making him angry, which led to his stabbing one in the chest and the other in the back.

The two people who died were from Las Vegas, while the six injured were tourists, NewsNation affiliate KLAS reported. They were identified as Brent Allan Hallett, 47, and Maris Mareen Digiovanni, 30.

Barrios, who is not a Las Vegas resident, was detained by Sands security guards and Metropolitan Police officers while running on a Strip sidewalk, police said.

“This was an isolated incident,” Metropolitan Police Deputy Chief James LaRochelle said in a statement. “All evidence indicates Barrios acted alone and there are no outstanding suspects at this time.”

The initial stabbing happened on the sidewalk and appeared to be unprovoked, LaRochelle said. After the first stabbing, the suspect went south and continued stabbing more victims before he eventually fled east on foot and was encountered by police and a security guard.

Police said he used a “large knife with a long blade” to execute the stabbing.

“This guy came, ran up and started stabbing this lady in front of me, and she ran around the escalators and she tried to get up under the bridge and her girlfriend was trying to help her,” one witness, Jason Adams, said.

Las Vegas Sheriff Joe Lombardo said the suspect was taken into custody “within minutes” of the incident.

All images from Nexstar affiliate KLAS.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.