The mother of a slain Las Vegas teenager has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the hotel just off the Strip where her son was shot dead during a party in 2023.
Laquinna Wiggins, according to the lawsuit, alleges that negligent security at the Platinum Hotel, a hotel and condominium complex at Flamingo Road and Koval Lane, led to her 17-year-old son’s death.
Omarion Wilson, a North Las Vegas high school student at the time, was at a birthday bash on March 25, 2023, in one of the rooms at the hotel. A call about a shooting came in to Metropolitan Police Department dispatchers just after 9 p.m., and, when officers responded, Wilson was found suffering from a gunshot wound.
Wilson, a standout football player and track and field athlete at Legacy High School, was pronounced dead hours later at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center.
Sin’cere Smith was arrested in California in June 2024 by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. Smith, then 15, was sentenced to up to 25 years in prison after he was convicted of second-degree murder.
Filed Friday in District Court, the lawsuit, administered by attorneys Rob Murdock and Sydney Koren of the Las Vegas law firm Murdock & Associates, alleges that the operators of the hotel — Marcus Hotels and Resorts and Marcus Management Las Vegas LLC — “knowingly tolerated illegal and dangerous activity and thus failed to monitor who enters or leaves” its complex, which helped lead to the shooting happening.
The night of the shooting, witnesses told police that several people who arrived at the party were wearing ski masks, according to Metro police.
Smith was seen in surveillance footage at the hotel placing a firearm into a backpack, and was seen in surveillance footage running away from the hotel after the shooting, police said.
Along with the companies named in the lawsuit, the owner of the unit where the shooting occurred, Ash Armstrong, and the person who helped plan the party, a Platinum Hotel resident at the time named Nebrasha Brandon, were named. Efforts to reach Armstrong and Brandon were unsuccessful.
Brandon, it’s alleged in the lawsuit, rented the room where the party took place and was known to also provide “professional services” at the hotel. The lawsuit doesn’t say what the services were.
The lawsuit, which asks for a jury trial, alleges the property’s operators allowed for an environment “where a violent crime could occur.”
“Our goal here is to obtain compensation for the damages suffered by Omarion’s mother,” Murdock said in a statement. “This shooting was preventable had the Defendants looked out for the safety of their patrons.”
A message left for the general manager of the Platinum Hotel was not immediately returned Friday.
Contact Bryan Horwath at bhorwath@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BryanHorwath on X.