Apparent social media ‘conflict’ leaves two dead in Bellagio shooting
At around 10.40pm local time on the Las Vegas Strip on Sunday, local police responded to sounds of gunfire outside the Bellagio Hotel and Casino. By the time they arrived, they found two individuals suffering from gunshot wounds and both were pronounced dead at the scene.
In a statement, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said it believed the shooting to be “an isolated incident”, with a suspect identified. On Monday morning, the perpetrator was identified as 41-year-old Manuel Ruiz, who turned himself in to the Henderson Police Department. He is being held on two charges of murder with a deadly weapon.
On Sunday, police noted that the parties “knew each other and had previously engaged in conflict over social media”. According to News 3, the shooting appeared to stem from an ongoing conflict between Ruiz, who ran the “SinCity Family” and “SinCity-MannyWise” YouTube channels, and another YouTube personality known as “Finny Da Legend”. Both of Ruiz’s accounts have since been deactivated.
Unconfirmed reports on X indicated that it was Finny Da Legend and his wife who were killed by Ruiz and the incident was captured on a livestream on Finny’s channel that has since been taken down. Clips of the shooting, in which viewers can see the gunfire erupt, are still circulating on X.
X users also reposted clips of a video that Ruiz had posted on Saturday where he was driving around town supposedly looking for his internet foe.
MGM Resorts, parent company of Bellagio, declined to comment Monday and directed inquiries to Las Vegas police.
Strip safety top of mind
Safety in and around the Las Vegas Strip has become a key point of concern for several years. Of course, this started in earnest on 1 October 2017, when Stephen Paddock opened fire from a suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay onto the Route 91 Harvest music festival below, killing 60 and wounding more than 400 others. The incident stands as the deadliest mass shooting in US history.
Since then, one of the ways officials have tried to stamp out crime has been through “order-out corridors”. In 2022, Clark County enacted an ordinance that made most of the Strip and surrounding areas an “order-out corridor”, allowing courts to ban individuals from the area for up to a year if found to have committed a misdemeanour crime there. This was meant to reduce crime and lighten criminal caseloads for courts. The corridors were subsequently expanded to include downtown and other high-traffic areas.
A special Resort Corridor Court was created in 2023 just to handle these cases, but was eventually folded last year. In this year’s legislative session, the Nevada Resort Association and Culinary Workers Union Local 226 – historically heated foes – jointly petitioned for the reestablishment of the court. However, the state legislature faced a chaotic final day and the crime bill that featured the court language did not receive a vote.
Down on its luck
The Bellagio incident is the latest difficulty for the Strip, which has not had a great year in 2025. Things started off poorly, with 37-year-old army veteran Matthew Livelsberger committing suicide in a Tesla Cybertruck he blew up outside the Trump International Hotel on the morning of 1 January. Per the Associated Press, Livelsberger left a note saying that the incident should serve as “a wake-up call” following Donald Trump’s reelection as president.
Then in the spring, Trump kicked off an up-and-down trade war with numerous US trading partners. This included Mexico and Canada, by far the biggest feeder markets to Las Vegas. While the tariffs enacted by Trump may not directly impact travel, the negative international sentiment is expected to be a drag on visitation.
According to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, April visitor volume for the city overall was 3.3 million, down 5% from last year. For the Strip specifically, occupancy was down 0.4%, while average daily rates were up almost 5% to $203.
Even before the trade tensions, the Strip was facing a tough comp from a record year of performance in 2024. In April, market revenue fell 3% YoY, representing the third consecutive monthly decline and the eighth in the previous nine months. The streak of record years post-Covid is in jeopardy, as the Strip is down more than 3% for the fiscal year.