Forced into car, assaulted, and robbed
The octogenarian slot machine player is cliché, but you know what? We all just want to enjoy our lives, so just because something is cliché, it doesn’t mean it’s bad. You do you. In 2019, an elderly woman was having a good day, playing slots at Wind Creek Bethlehem casino in Pennsylvania and living life, but that day ended in horror, as she was kidnapped, robbed, and assaulted. For her trouble, the casino only offered a free dinner, so now she is suing.
The 84-year-old woman, whose name has not been released publicly, visited Wind Creek on December 11, 2019. When she left, Hykeem Sessions followed her through the casino and into the elevator to the parking garage. He hit her in the head and forced her into her car to flee the property with him.
In the end, all he got was seven dollars. Police apprehended him shortly thereafter and he was sentenced last month to 12 to 24 months in prison.
Do you offer free soda refills, too?
Obviously, Wind Creek Casino knows that this looks bad, so they wanted to try to make it up to the woman. By offering her a free dinner. My father turns 77 next month, so that’s in the general vicinity of the victim’s age. If something like that happened to him and the casino was that ridiculous with its peace offering, he would respond with something like, “You have got to be shitting me.”
Actually, he probably wouldn’t. It would probably be something boring like, “That is simply unacceptable,” and then he would call me laugh at them and talk it over.
The woman and her husband are suing the casino for “gross negligence” in its security. If Wind Creek did a better job with security, the lawsuit states, none of this would have happened.
“This is just particularly concerning since the casino targets this vulnerable population of seniors as clients to profit from, but then they’re not taking the most appropriate measures to make sure these people are safe,” said John Pinto, the victim’s attorney.
Completely preventable
And it’s not like the incident went completely undetected. The casino did have systems in place, it just didn’t use them. Sessions’ stalking her through the casino is all on security footage, so a security officer should have been able to stop the attack before it happened, according to the lawsuit. Nobody on the casino floor was observant enough to do anything, either.
A Wind Creek employee even heard the woman scream and shout, “I don’t have any money!” when she was attacked. Unfortunately, in the time it took for the employee to get help, Sessions and the victim had left.
The lawsuit also states that “had been subject to numerous violations and fines by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board for security lapses/violations including in the months leading up to” the attack, so it should have been hyper-vigilant.
It sounds like the woman was not hurt badly and is doing fine physically, but the emotional trauma has been so difficult to overcome that she has gone to therapy. She and her husband are seeking $50,000 in damages.
