A Utah woman who says she was stabbed 27 times and left for dead outside a Las Vegas motel room has filed a lawsuit against the property and the online platform where she met her attacker. Sandra Joann Clantz alleges the Capri Motel's negligent security and Skip The Games' lack of user screening both contributed to the November 2024 attack that nearly killed her.
Clantz filed the lawsuit in district court, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, naming the Capri Motel and Skip The Games as defendants and requesting a jury trial. The suit does not name her attacker, Ryan Heider, who is not a defendant in the civil case. As of Saturday, neither the motel nor the website had been served with the lawsuit, per the newspaper's report.
According to the lawsuit, Clantz met Heider through Skip The Games, an online platform that lists escort services, and the two connected before Heider traveled from Michigan to Las Vegas to meet her. He met her at the Capri Motel on Fremont Street, where he stabbed her 27 times and left her for dead outside the motel room, the Review-Journal reported. Heider was 17 years old at the time and had claimed to be 22.
Criminal Case Ended With Adult Prison Sentence
Heider was prosecuted as an adult despite being a minor at the time of the attack, a legal outcome made possible because Nevada law allows prosecutors to certify and try juvenile defendants as adults in District Court for major violent offenses, according to court records reviewed by Docket Alarm. Those records show the criminal case was originally filed in January 2025 with charges of attempted murder with a deadly weapon and first-degree kidnapping resulting in substantial bodily harm.
Heider ultimately pleaded guilty to residential burglary and mayhem with use of a deadly weapon, both felonies, the Review-Journal reported. In October 2025, Judge Bita Yeager ordered him to serve eight to 25 years in prison, with credit for nearly a year of time already served.
Lawsuit Targets Motel's Security History
The lawsuit alleges the Capri Motel's negligence allowed repeated criminal activity to continue on the property and that it failed to provide adequate security despite that history, according to the Review-Journal's account of the filing. The 18-room budget property sits at 3245 East Fremont Street in East Las Vegas, per records from the Nevada State Library and Archives.
The motel has a documented history of law enforcement incidents. In June 2003, it was the site of a police shooting when Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officers fired on a six-time felon who accelerated his vehicle toward officers during a narcotics warrant operation, according to the Las Vegas Sun. To hold the motel liable now, Clantz's attorneys must show under Nevada law that violent crime on the property was reasonably foreseeable and that security measures were inadequate, a standard set out in state statute governing innkeeper liability. The Capri Motel received the newspaper's request for comment on August 7 but did not respond, and Clantz's attorneys likewise did not provide comment to the Review-Journal.
Escort Site Faces Separate Legal Standard
Clantz separately accuses Skip The Games of facilitating prostitution and sex trafficking, alleging the site has no screening or verification process ensuring minors use it only with parental guidance or consent, according to the lawsuit as reported by the Review-Journal. She alleges the platform failed to adequately protect users from potentially dangerous users.
Skip The Games spokesperson Elsa Kiva called the situation described in the court filing horrible but said the platform has strict screening procedures meant to keep minors away. Any civil claim against the website will have to navigate federal internet liability protections, since amendments created by FOSTA-SESTA carved out exceptions to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that allow lawsuits against platforms that knowingly assist or facilitate prostitution or sex trafficking, according to the federal statute published by GovInfo. Industry and law enforcement reports cited by Brill indicate Skip The Games became one of the nation's primary online classified channels for escort listings after the federal government shut down Backpage.com in 2018.
Why Commercial Sex Sites Fill a Legal Gap in Las Vegas
While Nevada is widely known for legal, regulated brothels, those operations exist only in 10 rural counties. Commercial sex and solicitation remain illegal in Clark County, home to Las Vegas, because state law prohibits licensed brothels in counties with populations of 700,000 or more, according to FindLaw. That legal gap pushes commercial sex activity in urban centers onto unregulated channels; research cited on Wikipedia's overview of prostitution in Nevada indicates roughly 66 times more money is spent on illegal commercial sex in the state's cities than in its legal rural brothels.
The lawsuit seeks more than $15,000 in damages, including costs for future medical treatment, according to the filing reported by the Review-Journal. Clantz filed within the two-year window required for personal injury and premises liability claims under Nevada law. With neither defendant yet served, the case remains in its earliest stages, and it is not yet known when the Capri Motel or Skip The Games will formally respond in court.
