Charges pile up against suspects in armed robbery at Bellagio

Aaron Clemens

Monday, July 17, 2000 | 10:22 a.m.

Jose Manuel Vigoa, 40, and Oscar Cisneros Sanchez, 23, will face penalties of 32 to 270 years in prison when they stand trial in connection with the June 3 armed robbery of the Bellagio.

And prosecutors say they have not finished filing charges against the pair, who have been called suspects in a string of armored truck robberies at hotels over the past two years and one fatal armored truck heist in Henderson in March.

Cisneros Sanchez, formerly known as Sanchez Cisneros, and Vigoa were ordered held without bail Friday by Justice of the Peace Deborah Lippis on five robbery charges, two charges of attempted murder, two of grand larceny and two charges of possession of a stolen vehicle. They will be arraigned before District Judge Kathy Hardcastle on July 24.

Penalties on those charges range between 1 to 4 and 4 to 40 years each, and if the two are convicted on all charges and the sentences are run consecutively, they could wind up in prison for most of their lives.

Vigoa will answer six other charges related to his alleged use of a gun during the robbery and a high-speed chase that ended in his arrest June 7. He faces another 7 to 51 years in prison on those charges.

"It's obvious that the state wants to throw enough mud against the wall and hopes some would stick," Deputy Special Public Defender Drew Christensen said.

Christensen argued unsuccessfully to Lippis that the five counts of robbery should be reduced to one because it was a crime against the Bellagio, not five crimes against individuals.

He also tried to persuade Lippis to reduce two counts of attempted murder, representing two shots fired, to one count of assault with a deadly weapon.

"Their intent was to get away," he said. "If there had been 10 shots, would there be 10 charges of attempted murder?"

Lippis disagreed. "If it were not for gravity," she said, "maybe someone would have been killed."

Defense attorneys were successful in getting dismissed charges of firing a weapon into a vehicle within city limits and firing from an occupied vehicle.

However, Lippis allowed the identification of Cisneros Sanchez in a police lineup over defense objections that their client was the largest man in the group.

She also addressed an objection to a police lineup of Vigoa.

During preliminary hearing testimony earlier in the week, Troy Blundell, a former UNLV police officer who saw the suspects leave Bellagio from his limousine during the early morning robbery, misidentified another man in the lineup as Vigoa. Lippis noted the error was understandable because of a facial similarity with Vigoa, who was not present in the lineup.

Vigoa and Cisneros Sanchez have also been named suspects by police in a string of armored truck robberies at the MGM Grand, Desert Inn, Mandalay Bay and New York-New York, and at a Ross Dress for Less store in Henderson, where two armed guards were killed.