Shift manager shot, killed at A.C. casino

ATLANTIC CITY - A shift manager at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort was fatally shot yesterday in a storage room just off the casino floor.

Minutes later, a suspect identified by state police as a 57-year-old man from Norristown, Pa., was arrested inside the casino's parking garage. Police also recovered a handgun that may have been used in the shooting.

The manager, identified by a company official as Ray Kot of Egg Harbor Township, was pronounced dead about 5:30 p.m., 21/2 hours after the shooting.

When word came that he had died, Debbie Schultz, a vacationer from Minneapolis, dropped to her knees on the sidewalk a couple of blocks away and cried.

"I didn't know him, but I just feel so bad about it all," said Schultz, who was playing slots around 3 p.m. when she heard three gunshots. The shooting apparently happened in a nonpublic area of the casino called the "card and dice room," where gaming supplies are stored.

But Mark Juliano, chief operating officer of Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., which operates the casino, knew him.

"He was the loveliest human being you'd ever want to meet," said Juliano. "He didn't have an enemy in the world."

The area where the shooting occurred, near a New Jersey Casino Control Commission booth, is not visible from the casino floor.

Patrons and others said that after the shots rang out, they were quickly ushered away from the area.

Kot, who was shot in the abdomen, was rushed to the trauma unit at AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center with injuries that police originally said did not appear to be life-threatening.

The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, which is handling the investigation, declined to provide further details about what happened or what may have prompted the shooting. No casino patrons nor any other employees were injured and no one was evacuated from the casino, officials said.

Juliano said that the gunman was not a casino employee, and that there did not appear to have been a dispute between Kot and the gunman before the incident. State police said the suspect apparently knew Kot from past instances as a patron at the casino.

Kot had been with the casino since it opened in 1990, a "Day One employee," Juliano said.

The casino remained open yesterday, but the table games were shut down and employees who work in those areas were sent home, Juliano said.

Juliano said he and other executives from Trump Entertainment Resorts were in talks with another company over the sale of Trump Marina Casino Hotel when word of the violence reached the boardroom and abruptly ended the meeting.

The shooting was the second incident involving gunshots at the Taj Mahal this year. On Jan. 30, a suspect in a New York embezzlement case pulled a gun and threatened to kill himself in an office there. He accidentally fired a shot during an 11-hour standoff before surrendering to police.

The Taj Mahal, one of Atlantic City's biggest casinos, is the largest of three casinos operated in the resort by Trump Entertainment Resorts. Donald Trump relinquished control of the operation during a 2005 bankruptcy and in February resigned as chairman of the company when its bondholders rebuffed his efforts to buy it. After its most recent Chapter 11 filing in February, the company has a deadline of today to sell its Trump Marina property.