The FBI concluded that ricin found in a Las Vegas hotel room resulted from a "gross misunderstanding" between a guest and room service. Room service staff misinterpreted a request for "rice and coke" as "ricin coke", street slang for ricin-laced cocaine, according to FBI reports.
With competitive Las Vegas hotels eagerly catering to every fancy of increasingly whimsical guests, the Extended Stay Hotel staffer obliged by delivering an ounce of cocaine laced with ricin.
The unwitting guest was quickly overcome by the toxin and, when discovered in a comatose state, stripped, and then later resuscitated by a 911 hazmat response team, decontaminated, and eventually raced to a nearby hospital.
But Extended Stay Las Vegas problems have now worsened. Two days after the ricin incident, another former guest - Wout Ov Yuxe of Harbin, China - stepped forward with allegations against the same hotel.
Yuxe claims that in 2006, he placed a room service order for "Rice and soy sauce", only to find that the "snack" actually consisted of lice and soy sauce. The hotel classified this as a "gross misunderstanding."
Speaking through his now ever-present translator, Mr. Yuxe states that he suspected something was strange. "It was like the smallest and wiggliest rice I had ever seen. I kept struggling as it seemed to slither off my chopsticks. But I definitely knew something was wrong by the third mouthful."
Yuxe did not seek restitution at the time, figuring that "you can't expect much from a comped meal at an off-the-strip joint."
But following the recent ricin incident, Yuxe is considering pressing charges in what his attorney is calling a "pattern of gross misunderstanding" at the Extended Stay Hotel.
