An arrest was made last week in what's become known as the Wedding Chapel Wars, after a driver for A Las Vegas Garden of Love got in a fight with two handbillers from Vegas Wedding Chapel. These two chapels have been warmongering for more than a year now, with Vegas Wedding Chapel twice taking Cheryl Luell, owner of Garden of Love, and her family and employees to court seeking protective orders against them.
The two sides of the story are, of course, conflicting. According to "Lucky," a handbiller involved in the scuffle, he was just going about his business, handing out fliers and leading a wedding party down to the Vegas Wedding Chapel, also known as Las Vegas Wedding Bureau. Then he says a driver from A Las Vegas Garden of Love pushed down another handbiller for the Vegas Wedding Chapel in front of the courthouse, and Lucky says he immediately dialed 311. (He even took a picture of his phone, with the date, the time and 311 dialed to prove it). That's when the representative of A Las Vegas Garden of Love stepped in front of him.
"First he started belly bucking, said get off the sidewalk. Belly buck, belly buck. And I said I'm sorry, I don't work for you. And then I got head-butted twice," explains Lucky, who's wearing a black tuxedo with a black tie. "The people who were there were screaming and yelling for him to stop, especially the bride and groom."
The driver fled the scene before cops could arrive. Lucky and his colleague rode in an ambulance to the hospital, where he was X-rayed for neck and jaw injuries, and he was given an anti-inflammatory pain medication and muscle relaxants for a strained neck. About a week later, he has a small scratch above his left eye and what looks like discoloring on his right cheek. He feels he's being targeted because he's written up complaints about the chapel, referencing issues with their limousines.
A few days later the driver from Las Vegas Garden of Love returned to the courthouse, where he was picked up by the police, charged with felony battery and taken to the Clark County Detention Center.
Garden of Love tells the story differently. Cheryl Luell, who owns the chapel, recounted the version that the driver (who's a black man) shared with her. "[The driver] was talking to a black couple. ['Lucky'] grabbed his flier out of his hand again, told him we were a shitty chapel, spit on him and called him a n------. So that's how the fight broke out."
If you ask Lucky, the scenario is entirely different. First, he says, there was a party of five, all of them white. And that he never used a racial slur. "That's not my caliber," he says.
But as Luell sees it, her driver was a victim who had the right to fight back. She thinks the cops have favored the other chapels, time and again. "Somebody calls you a name somebody spits on you you're just supposed to take it? Then you call the cops, they don't do nothing for us, to our side."
Lucky considers himself the victim. And he's on a mission to put an end to what he calls the "gangland" tactics used on him.
"When people hear the word chapel they think of anything but wrong. And what it is is a crusade that I have taken on to put an end to the illegal business practices of Las Vegas Garden of Love."
Garden of Love professes the same crusade against their competition.