Gun discoveries in hotels, including in downtown Chicago, a security concern as Lollapalooza nears and crowds return

CHICAGO – It’s still unknown why an Iowa man allegedly had a rifle with a laser scope in his hotel room overlooking a downtown Chicago beach over the Fourth of July weekend.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago police Superintendent David Brown have said they believe a disaster may have been averted, though no evidence has emerged that Keegan Casteel was planning any kind of attack. Casteel’s lawyers have suggested he brought the rifle for protection on a weekend trip to Chicago, where he planned to propose to his girlfriend at the Navy Pier Ferris wheel.

But regardless of the motive, the discovery of Casteel’s .308-caliber rifle by cleaning staff at the W Chicago Hotel — as well as a similar incident before the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Denver — offers a stark reminder of what many security experts say remains a top concern for cities like Chicago, which is about to host Lollapalooza, one of the largest music festivals in the country.

Stopping the next real threat remains a major worry, the experts said, as hotels are not equipped to thwart attempts to bring weapons in and law enforcement can’t have eyes everywhere at once.

“We don’t know what (Casteel’s) intent was,” said Jeffrey Cramer, a former federal prosecutor who is now senior managing director of the Chicago-based security firm Guidepost Solutions. “But it doesn’t take much of a vivid imagination to wonder the damage a person can do with an arsenal in a hotel room. We’ve seen it. It’s not guesswork anymore.”

Security in the nation’s hospitality industry has been at the forefront since a gunman opened fire on concertgoers from his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas nearly four years ago, killing nearly 60 people and wounding more than 850.

Early in the investigation, it was reported that the gunman, Stephen Paddock, had rented two rooms at Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel overlooking the Lollapalooza festival in Grant Park just two months before the Las Vegas attack, but he never showed up.

Experts interviewed by the Tribune this week said security measures at the country’s hotels have been beefed up since the Las Vegas massacre, which remains the deadliest single-gunman mass shooting in the country’s history.

In many cities, for example, guests are no longer allowed to tell cleaning crews to stay out for multiple days, as Paddock reportedly did. Police in Chicago have at times run surveillance looking for activity in hotel windows.

But vacationers, business travelers and other hotel guests typically have a higher expectation of freedom than in other settings such as airports, the experts said, posing a significant security challenge that still relies heavily on training hotel staff to spot suspicious behavior, luggage and situations.

“Hotels aren’t typically set up for that type of control, where you lock down that hotel, and you’re sweeping every bag that comes in,” said Arnette Heintze, a retired security consultant who also once headed the U.S. Secret Service’s Chicago office. “It’s just not a part of our society or an environment that individual hotel owners or a nation is actually prepared to step toward.”

Heintze said the fact that Casteel’s guns were discovered by cleaning staff who alerted others was “exactly what needs to happen in these types of cases.”

“You want to have hotel employees trained, prepared and understanding of reporting unusual behavior,” she said. “Obviously, anybody (who) sees a gun in a hotel room in Chicago knows, ‘OK, well something’s up.’”

Casteel, 32, of Ankeny, Iowa, was arrested at the hotel in the 600 block of North DuSable Lake Shore Drive on July 4 and charged with two counts of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. In addition to the rifle, police recovered several rifle magazines and a .45-caliber handgun from his 12th-floor room, prosecutors have said. He posted bond last week and has not entered a plea.

Casteel, an auto mechanic with two children, has no felony record, and no motive for bringing the weapons into the hotel as has been alleged in court records. But in setting bond at $10,000, Cook County Circuit Court Judge David Navarro noted the concerning circumstances.

“The state describes you in possession in a hotel room of a rifle with a laser scope ... overlooking Ohio Street Beach,” Navarro said. “I understand through the state’s proffer and your attorney that you have permission to possess the firearms in the state of Iowa. However, clearly, we’re not in Iowa.”

Brown told reporters at a briefing last week that the firearms were in a “very suspicious position” on a window sill inside one of the rooms.

“This employee saw something by entering a room to clean it that likely prevented a tragedy from happening,” Brown said at the briefing. “So it’s significant and very valuable and we ought ... (to) praise that employee for being aware and letting us know so we could react quickly and potentially avoid tragedy.”

Lightfoot, meanwhile, accused Casteel of bringing “weapons of war” into the city.

“Five loaded magazines, that’s not, ‘I’m going to the big city and I want to take my weapon,’” she said. “That’s something more nefarious.”

Casteel’s attorneys on Wednesday blasted Lightfoot and Brown for what they said were “baseless” public accusations about Casteel’s intentions, saying in a written statement that “there was nothing nefarious afoot.”

The attorneys also said Casteel had been held up as a scapegoat for Chicago’s rampant violence even though he legally purchased both firearms and had been issued a concealed carry license in his home state.

“The fact that good people feel the need to arm themselves when traveling to Chicago is the real problem that our public officials need to address,” the statement read.

The W Hotel did not return phone calls from the Tribune seeking comment.

Less than a week after Casteel’s arrest, an employee at the Maven Hotel in Denver, a block from Coors Field, called police after finding weapons in a room as guests were coming in for All-Star Game festivities. Four people were arrested and more than a dozen weapons, including several rifles, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition were seized, authorities said.

A man described by authorities as the leader of the group, Ricardo Rodriguez, had asked the hotel to extend his stay and requested another room with a balcony, according to news reports.

As in Casteel’s case, police have said they’re still investigating why the group allegedly had the arsenal in their rooms, though there was no reason to believe that any terrorist attack was being planned.

Anthony Riccio, a former second in command at the Chicago Police Department, said law enforcement and hotel security personnel can’t wait to find out a person’s intentions before acting.

“The old thing about these types of acts is we have to be right 100% of the time,” said Riccio, now the director of public safety for Chicago-based Monterrey Security. “They only have to be right once. And that’s exactly what happened in Vegas. I mean, you can stop 99 of them and if the 100th one occurs, you’ve got some serious carnage.”

Riccio said monitoring a potential threat at a hotel takes sufficient “layers” of deterrence, including a police presence outside a hotel and a hotel security staff inside that is well-versed in knowing what unusual behavior to look for.

At the time of Riccio’s retirement last year from CPD, detectives were assigned to the downtown hotels as liaisons to the managers, general managers and security directors. The detectives and the hotel staff would constantly talk and exchange information. After the Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017, Riccio said CPD assigned officers outside high-rise hotels downtown “to kind of look at what’s being brought in.”

“It’s hard to mask a rifle, for example. You know, if somebody’s bringing in something like that, we had officers right there to look at it and see what was in those containers if it looked like they were large and could potentially hold a rifle, or something of that nature,” Riccio said.

He also said “spotters” with binoculars were used by the Police Department at various locations around hotels to look for any windows breaking or any other suspicious activity.

All of those concerns will certainly be in play later this month as hundreds of thousands of concertgoers hit Chicago’s downtown for the Lollapalooza festival in Grant Park, which begins its four-day run on July 29.

In a statement, the Chicago Police Department said it has been meeting with local businesses, including hotels, about security measures ahead of the festival, including “being aware of suspicious objects and packages.”

“CPD will have sufficient resources in place and we are also coordinating with other city agencies and our law enforcement partners,” the statement read.

The city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications also said it is continuing to refine security plans “to ensure the safety of residents and all festival-goers.”

“As we have seen in recent incidents, stepping up to report anything that may be criminally suspicious is key,” OEMC said in an emailed statement. “Since we all play a part in keeping Chicago safe, as well as addressing the potential threat of terrorism and other criminal activity, OEMC encourages residents and visitors to report any suspicious objects, persons, or any unusual activity by calling 911 immediately or notify security personnel on-site.”

Riccio said the best advice to the public remains the adage “see something, say something.”

“If something doesn’t seem right, they need to just simply pick up the phone and make a call, and either CPD will follow up on it or internal hotel security will at least do an initial assessment,” he said.

As for the Casteel case, it’s a wait-and-see scenario. Heintze said investigators now have a responsibility to fully look into Casteel’s background, including his family, co-workers and friends, as well as any social media footprint.

He also noted, though, that Casteel was allowed to have guns in Iowa, and he comes from a state that’s rural, where gun ownership is very common and “people move guns back and forth from their home to their work.”

“A responsible gun owner would go, ‘OK. I’m going to another state. What are the laws there?’ Heintze said. “That’s part of the investigation to determine that you know about the laws (here). And ... his lack of knowledge of the laws doesn’t make him less culpable.”

Cramer, of Guidepost Solutions, noted that in Casteel’s case, there was “an element of serendipity” in that he had allegedly left his rifle out in plain sight. Either way, he questioned whether “our first line of defense” should really be the cleaning staff of a hotel.

“Are they now the first responders?” Cramer said. “It seems like society needs to make a move to get ahead of this, put plans in place now that balance civil liberties and hospitality with security. Otherwise you are just counterpunching.”