After losing thousands, officer kills himself in casino

Jim Suhr

Friday, Jan. 28, 2000 | 9:40 a.m.

DETROIT - After losing thousands of dollars in a day of gambling at Detroit's new casinos, off-duty police Sgt. Solomon Bell tried one last high-stakes blackjack hand.

He lost.

Seconds later, the award-winning officer abruptly stood up and cried out "Noooooo," then pulled his gun and shot himself in the head as other players scrambled away.

Believed to be the first suicide inside a gambling hall, Bell's death Wednesday has highlighted concerns about casino gambling in a city pinning much of its hope for revival on three new casinos.

To City Council member Kay Everett, "one person deciding to have their own demise should not be the demise of the casino. That's ludicrous."

But one of her colleagues worries that Bell's death won't be the last casualty in high-stakes, high-pressure gaming in Detroit or elsewhere.

"I predicted this is the kind of problem we would face because of the addictiveness of gambling," says Detroit City Council member Maryann Mahaffey, who says she grudgingly has backed Detroit's casinos only because Michigan voters in 1996 mandated three of them.

"We know from the studies that have been done across the country that this is a predictable outcome, much as you don't want this."

A day after Bell killed himself at the MotorCity Casino, a 37-year Detroit Fire Department battalion chief threatened to kill himself Thursday at the MGM Grand Detroit Casino while playing blackjack. Police alerted by the dealer took the man into custody for treatment at a crisis center.

"I guess he lost all the money he had, and he made a statement to the dealer saying he was going to do the same thing as the gentleman yesterday did," Police Commander Gregory Gaskin said.

The 38-year-old Bell's death was shocking to people who knew him and described him as jovial, upbeat and with few visible problems - gambling or otherwise.

Since joining Oak Park's Department of Public Safety about 12 years ago, he rose through the ranks from uniformed patrol officer to investigator, later to sergeant and patrol supervisor.

In 1988 and 1990, he got merit awards for arrests in cases involving stolen vehicles, says Bob Bauer, the department's deputy director. Bell's service record was unblemished.

"He was a hard worker, dedicated and loyal," Bauer says. "I just describe him as a good guy."

Away from his $63,675-a-year job, the unmarried Bell kept private and tended meticulously to his house in nearby Southfield. He owned a 1995 Cadillac Seville and liked to rollerskate.

Co-workers say they knew he occasionally gambled, but never saw signs of a problem.

Then on his day off Wednesday, authorities say he lost $15,000 to $20,000 at the MGM Grand Detroit Casino, open since July, and the 6-week-old MotorCity Casino.

At MotorCity, spokesman Jack Barthwell says, Bell tried various blackjack tables in the casino's high-stakes VIP room before losing roughly $4,000 on a hand at a $100-minimum game.

Bell stood up and pulled his gun, then fired a shot into his temple so abruptly the few players and about 20 casino workers on the fourth floor had no time to intervene, Barthwell said.

As his body lay on the floor near the table, gamblers on lower floors continued playing. The VIP room where Bell died reopened five hours later, Barthwell said.

"We felt it was important to get it opened and return things to normal," he said.

Barthwell said the security measures at the casino, where weapons are banned, would be reviewed, though they likely would not include adding metal detectors. State law, he says, still would have allowed Bell as a policeman to carry a pistol off-duty.

"There would have been nothing we could do about this situation," Barthwell says.

Carol O'Hare, the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling's executive director, says she knows of no previous suicide committed inside a U.S. casino, though there have been suicides associated with casinos.

In August, a German tourist died by jumping from the roof of the nine-story Resorts Atlantic City parking garage in New Jersey, making him the third suicide at a casino building there in eight days. A gambler who lost $87,000 at the tables jumped off a Trump Plaza roof, and a Caesars Atlantic City Hotel Casino dealer leaped to his death from the casino's parking garage.

The National Council on Problem Gambling, citing various studies, says one in five pathological gamblers attempts suicide. A 1998 Harvard Medical School study estimated that 1.6 percent of the adults in the United States and Canada had experienced pathological gambling at some point in their life.

"Short of someone leaving a note that 'The reason I killed myself is ... ,' there's a lot of armchair detective work to determine what chain of events caused someone to do that," Ms. O'Hare says. "Frequently, what you have is things playing together. Many times you have drinking problems or marital problems."

A third temporary casino is expected to open in Detroit this spring. Larger, permanent casinos with hotel rooms, conference facilities, entertainment venues and additional restaurants are expected to open by 2004.