Police to release Gibbons information

Sam Skolnik, J. Patrick Coolican and Jeff German

Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2006 | 7:26 a.m.

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Police said they would release new information today, including 911 tapes and witness interviews, about a mysterious event Friday in which a woman accused Republican governor candidate Jim Gibbons of assault, only to withdraw the allegation.

The story is still stirring questions, fed by Democratic whispering, by information and contradictory accounts gleaned from Metro Police and a potential witness, and by the refusal of police or the Gibbons campaign to identify the people involved.

As questions grew this week, police said they would provide more information Tuesday. But late in the afternoon, they postponed the release until today, saying they needed more time to transcribe and assemble statements.

The incident occurred about 10 p.m. Friday night, after Gibbons and campaign adviser Sig Rogich dined with supporters at McCormick & Schmick's restaurant near the corner of Flamingo and Paradise roads. Rogich is a longtime Republican consultant and lobbyist with strong ties to Nevada's casino industry. He has an office near the restaurant.

After dinner, Rogich and Gibbons retreated to the bar to wait out a rainstorm. In the bar, Rogich said Tuesday, he and Gibbons met two female attorneys who worked in Rogich's building and two other women, one of whom knew the two attorneys.

The incident with Gibbons occurred after the candidate left the bar.

Among the information that has surfaced this week is the existence of a second 911 call alleging an assault. Police records show that the first 911 call came not from McCormick & Schmick's but from a hotel lobby several hundred yards away.

Kim Hartnett, a night desk clerk at the La Quinta Inn on Paradise Road, told the Sun on Tuesday that before the call, she saw a man of similar appearance to Gibbons grab a woman's arm outside the front door of the hotel. The incident occurred about 10:20 p.m., Hartnett said. She said the woman yelled and pointed a finger at the man, who attempted to calm her down. The two then moved from Hartnett's view.

Hartnett described the man as in his late 50s to 60, medium to tall in height with salt-and-pepper hair. Gibbons is 61, of taller than average height, and has white hair tinged with black.

She said he wore dress slacks and an open dress shirt.

Rogich, however, said Gibbons was wearing a coat and tie at the restaurant, and thus the man at La Quinta couldn't have been him.

Hartnett said that a few minutes after the incident, a second woman - not the one she had seen outside the front door minutes before - entered the La Quinta lobby and called 911 to report an altercation outside. Hartnett said the woman told her: "We just want to get this taken care of."

Police said they received a call from La Quinta at 10:26 p.m.

Metro Deputy Chief Greg McCurdy said the call came from a female who alleged that she had been assaulted and had run over to La Quinta to dial 911. She sounded drunk on the phone and was laughing, McCurdy said. She did not mention Gibbons.

Robert Uithoven, Gibbons' campaign manager, said Gibbons was never at La Quinta. He was at his hotel, the nearby Marriott, by 10 p.m., preparing for Tuesday's debate with his Democratic rival, state Sen. Dina Titus, Uithoven said.

Shown several pictures of Gibbons by the Sun, Hartnett said he may have been the man she saw Friday, but could not positively identify him. She said she had been distracted by other people in the lobby and outside the hotel.

Hartnett also said that her manager was in the lobby near the time of the incident and could corroborate parts of her account. But calls to the manager by the Sun were not returned.

The location and time of the incident would be relevant only if the man Hartnett saw was Gibbons because the circumstances she describes would contradict accounts given by Rogich and Gibbons.

Rogich said that shortly before 10 p.m., he walked Gibbons to the door of McCormick & Schmick's and saw him turn right to go to the Marriott. Gibbons was alone, he said. Rogich said he did not see the woman.

Rogich said he then went inside to the restroom, paid his bill and left.

Gibbons told police Saturday that the woman lost her balance just after they walked out of the restaurant, which is about 1,000 feet away and across busy Paradise Road from the La Quinta Inn. The Reno congressman said he grabbed the woman to keep her from falling. The next day, he told police the incident was a misunderstanding.

Hartnett said that after the 911 call, a woman police officer responded quickly, but neither the two people who had been arguing nor the woman who made the call were still on the premises. The officer spoke briefly with Hartnett and left. McCurdy confirmed that officers took no witness statement from the La Quinta clerk.

Nearly an hour later, at 11:18 p.m., police said they received a second 911 call from a woman complaining that they had not responded to the first call. This time, Gibbons was named.

The caller said she would meet officers at Gordon Biersch Brewing Co., across Paradise from the La Quinta Inn, a police spokesman said. Officers met up with her and moved on to McCormick & Schmick's to interview witnesses.

According to police accounts, the woman who alleged that she was assaulted had been drinking for several hours and appeared intoxicated. When contacted the following day, she recanted her assault allegation, police said.

Employees of McCormick & Schmick's have differing accounts of what happened in the bar.

Two employees, who requested anonymity because the restaurant has threatened to fire any employees who talked to the media, say Gibbons drank more than a glass of wine while with Rogich. Gibbons has said he had one glass at the bar and one at dinner. Rogich said Gibbons had one, maybe two, glasses of wine at the most. Gibbons is usually a teetotaler, he said.

The bar tab totaled more than $300 before tip, Rogich said. Rogich said he bought a round of drinks for two separate tables nearby, including a table of 10, and a table of four. In total, he bought drinks for 16 or 18 people, he said. His receipt shows him paying just before 10 p.m., he said.

Lt. Chris Jones of Metro's South Central Area Command, one of six police officers, supervisors and detectives to respond to McCormick & Schmick's late Friday night, said he was aware that Gibbons was the man accused before he arrived on the scene. He said that he instructed his officers not to be affected by the information.

"This needed to be investigated, but we're not doing anything over the top," Jones said during a Monday interview. "We're going to handle this the same way we would handle any other battery allegation."

Two patrol officers arrived first as the restaurant was closing, Jones said. Soon after, they were joined by Jones, a sergeant and two detectives.

Jones said they interviewed the female accuser and several restaurant employees. "From the information we received that night, witnesses said the woman left the restaurant first, then the congressman left shortly afterwards," he said.

Jones said detectives told him that the woman "alleged that she was grabbed on the arm" by Gibbons. Beyond that, he said, the woman was "quite vague" about the allegation.

Jones said he could tell that the woman had been drinking. But she wasn't completely "out of sorts," he said. "She wasn't stumbling drunk, wasn't to the point where she couldn't be understood."

Jones would not provide any other details about the woman, including her name, her age, her appearance or whether she lived in Las Vegas.

Police know the incident occurred outside McCormick & Schmick's, Jones said, somewhere in the parking lot area.

Police that night looked for a video surveillance camera on or near the premises, but were unable to find one, he said.

Jones said the incident had been blown out of proportion. From the information police had gathered, he said, the events occurred "just in fact the way Mr. Gibbons explained them to have happened."

McCurdy, Metro's deputy chief, agreed: "From a police point of view, this was a he said, she said. We didn't see any evidence that a crime had occurred."

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