2 Men Sought in Slaying at Casino Taken Into Custody

Two men wanted in connection with the rape and slaying of a 7-year-old Los Angeles girl whose body was found in a Nevada casino bathroom were taken into custody Wednesday, authorities said.

Police say the two men, who were being held in an undisclosed Southern California facility, are the suspects who were captured on a surveillance videotape at the Primadonna Resort on the Nevada-California line. The men, believed to be from Long Beach, were wanted in the slaying of Sherrice Iverson, whose body was found before dawn Sunday, slumped on the toilet seat of a women’s restroom on the arcade level of the resort. Homicide investigators say she was sexually assaulted.

She had spent about 3 1/2 hours in the arcade, apparently without adult supervision, police and casino officials said.

Long Beach police spokesman Harry Erickson said late Wednesday that the two suspects had not been booked. Their names were not released.

Erickson said detectives from Las Vegas who helped in a joint investigation were en route to Long Beach to question the men.

He said both men matched the description of the suspects, including one man whose nipples and tongue were pierced and who had numerous tattoos. Long Beach police declined to release additional details.

The videotape captured Sherrice entering the women’s restroom at about 3:45 a.m. She was followed by a white man in his late teens or early 20s. Another young white male milled about outside the bathroom door.

At about 4:15 a.m., video images show the first man leaving the women’s room. About 45 minutes later, when Sherrice’s father couldn’t find her in the arcade, he asked a hotel employee to look for her.

The murder raised questions about the safety of children who accompany their parents to casinos.

Las Vegas authorities say Sherrice’s father, LeRoy Iverson left his daughter unattended repeatedly between 1:30 a.m. and 3:45 a.m. Sunday, when a security camera showed her entering the restroom. Iverson has denied that allegation.

Earlier Wednesday, Iverson, in a brief interview, denounced the Primadonna casino as failing to provide adequate security. Others said the killing was “a red flag” about the dangers of Las Vegas’ attempt to remake itself as a family vacation destination without increasing its efforts to keep children safe.

“Unattended children in Las Vegas are a risk to everyone--the hotels, the parents, society,” said Bill Thompson, a public administration professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and an authority on the casino industry.

“Allowing children to hang around casinos is like allowing them to hang around bars--and some casinos seem to encourage it,” he said. “The environment is unhealthy for children--especially at those casinos that seem to cater to a lower-end market.”

One of the Las Vegas homicide detectives investigating Sherrice’s killing said he was amazed by the number of unsupervised children at the Primadonna hotel arcade, where police say the girl’s father left her unsupervised during the night while he gambled.

Based on a viewing of surveillance videos of the arcade--the last place the South-Central Los Angeles girl was seen alive--the officer said he “counted at least 40 kids in the arcade at 3 in the morning, and I didn’t see any adults.”

LeRoy Iverson has hired attorney Eddie J. Harris of Johnnie L. Cochran Jr.’s law firm to represent him. Harris said he was contacted over the weekend by Iverson, whom he has known for 30 years and who attends the same Los Angeles church as Harris.

At a brief press conference outside Iverson’s South-Central home, Harris rejected the portrait of his client that had been painted earlier by casino officials and Las Vegas police.

Iverson was “a conscientious parent,” the lawyer insisted, adding that his client had rarely let Sherrice out of his sight during a trip to the casino with several children and other adults.

“She was not roaming around for hours at the hotel,” he said. Instead, he said, Sherrice was in the company of three other children--her 14-year-old brother, a 16-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy.

The only occasion when Sherrice was out of sight, Harris said, was when she went to the restroom in which her body was found.

Iverson, for his part, insisted that he “took care of my kids.”

The trip to the casino was “a short vacation for my children. No one looked for this to happen.”

The casino, he added, “lied about security. . . . They’re responsible for my daughter’s killing.”

“They advertise for children. . . . You go down there thinking your children will be safe,” he said. “You can’t watch your children 24 hours.”

Las Vegas officials “are doing everything they can to make me look like a bad parent,” he added. “They’re telling lies about me to cover up their side.”

“All I want to do is bury my daughter.”

Las Vegas police officials heatedly denied the account offered by Harris and Iverson, saying there were no other adults or older children supervising the girl during the hours before she was slain.

“There’s only the 14-year-old and the deceased,” said Keeton. “We looked at the [family’s] vehicle, and nobody else was around. We were with the father and [14-year-old] son for hours. We interviewed them at length. Nobody else was around.”

Harris and his client also denied accounts that after the discovery of his child’s body, Iverson asked the casino for beer, cash and other freebies.

“I didn’t ask for anything from those people,” Iverson insisted.

While arguments continued to rage about Iverson’s conduct in allegedly leaving his child unattended, Las Vegas police say they are not discussing bringing any charges against him, and are focusing instead on finding the killer.

At the same time, casino officials in Las Vegas wrestled with questions about their responsibility for children they have invited to their city.

If parents want to gamble, they have few options at most casinos in leaving their children: hire a private baby-sitter through the phone book, place the children in an on-site day care center that only a few hotels offer, leave the children in the hotel room--or plunk them in a game arcade with a handful of Mom’s and Dad’s quarters.

Some arcades are open 24 hours a day, and many are not regularly supervised by adults.

Clark County curfew laws prohibit children under the age of 18 from being in public places after either 10 p.m. or midnight, depending on the day of the week and whether school is in session. Along the Strip, the curfew is 9 p.m.

That curfew law applies not only to children walking down the street, but also to children’s arcades inside casinos, said Lori Coffin, a prosecutor in the juvenile division of the Clark County district attorney’s office.

A child who is at least 8 years old can be cited with criminal curfew violation if out after hours, she said, and a parent of a younger child violating curfew could be cited for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Sgt. Ralph Hemington of the Metro Police juvenile division said if police come across an unsupervised child in a public place, “We’d try to find the parent and, if we couldn’t, we would book the child into a juvenile facility. We would not normally release the child to an older sibling.”

But, he added, “in some given circumstances, that could be the most appropriate” resolution.

Police do not have the resources to patrol casinos and game arcade rooms in search of curfew violators, he said.

“The hotel casinos have their own private security--but their concern isn’t necessarily curfew violations,” he added.

Coffin, for her part, took a harder stance: “Hotel security should enforce the curfew. They could stop the kids [at the door] and call the parents, or Metro [Police]. But I’ve handled hundreds upon hundreds of [juvenile crime] cases, and I’ve never seen a kid cited for curfew.”

Some hotels that provide arcades--including the Luxor, Excalibur, Circus-Circus, the Mirage and Treasure Island--close them at 11 p.m. or midnight.

A security guard at the Gold Coast casino--where the arcade is open 24 hours--said children are not allowed inside the arcade after curfew unless supervised by an adult. The arcade is open all the time, he said, because “adults like playing some of those games too.”

Some hotel-casinos in Las Vegas offer supervised, on-site activity facilities for the children of guests at prices ranging between $5 and $6 an hour. The state line casinos do not, however.

Officials at various large hotel-casinos declined comment on their current level of security involving child welfare, or how it might be changed in the wake of Sherrice’s killing.

Nevada laws allow children to pass through casinos--as they must often do to reach their hotel room, a restaurant, an arcade or swimming pool--as long as they do not loiter.

Times staff writers Miles Corwin and Greg Krikorian in Los Angeles and Jeff Leeds in Long Beach contributed to this story.