Celebrity-Backed Bail Organization Shutters After Releasing Man Who Went On To Shoot Waiter

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UPDATED with statement from The Bail Project: A bail reform group, backed by celebrities including Danny Glover, John Legend and Richard Branson, has shut down its Las Vegas chapter after helping to release a man who went on to shoot and nearly kill a Las Vegas waiter.

Rashawn Gaston-Anderson, who had been arrested in November 2021 for burglary and theft, had been released by The Bail Project after it paid his $3,000 bail. Six days later, Gaston-Anderson allegedly opened fire in a Las Vegas restaurant, shooting waiter Chengyan Wang eleven times, nearly killing him. Wang is now suing The Bail Project, which denies that the closure was related to the lawsuit.

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“The Bail Project closed its Vegas branch earlier this month but it had nothing to do with the litigation,” a spokesperson for the organization said in a statement to Deadline. “As an advocacy organization that is also a service provider, The Bail Project seeks to maximize the number of people we can help annually with our limited resources. We monitor the volume of people served by our local sites and periodically reassess the allocation of staff and bail capital across the country accordingly. As part of this ongoing recalibration, we closed our site in Vegas earlier this month.”

In October, Gaston-Anderson pleaded guilty to charges of attempted robbery with a deadly weapon and mayhem with the use of a deadly weapon, and was sentenced to seven to 18 years in prison.

On its website, The Bail Project says it “combats mass incarceration by disrupting the money bail system — one person at a time. We restore the presumption of innocence, reunite families, and challenge a system that criminalizes race and poverty. We’re on a mission to end cash bail and create a more just, equitable, and humane pretrial system.”

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