Rob O’Neill, former SEAL who claims to have shot Osama bin Laden, sues Texas hotel over 2023 assault allegations

The former Navy SEAL who fired the bullet that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is now hunting for the Texas hotel where he allegedly attacked a security guard last summer. In a federal lawsuit, he claims the incident never happened.

Rob O’Neill was accused on August 23, 2023, of using the N-word during an affair with Johnny Lee Loomis, a white security guard working that day at the Omni Hotel in Frisco, Texas.

O’Neill was reportedly intoxicated at the time of the alleged attack. He was charged with assault and public intoxication. The Collin County District Attorney’s Office has not publicly said whether it plans to file charges, The Dallas Morning News reported, saying the office did not respond to a question about the case on Friday.

Since the allegations became public, O’Neill has not been getting as many speaking engagements as he once did, as he alleged in the lawsuit filed Aug. 14 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Dallas.

The lawsuit alleges that O’Neill “has suffered damages compensable, including, but not limited to, injury to Plaintiffs’ reputation, physical pain and mental anguish, loss of companionship and company, loss of business, opportunity, loss of speaking engagements, personal bodily injury and illness, and emotional distress, among other matters to be proven at trial.” The lawsuit seeks unspecified punitive damages of more than $75,000.

Speaking to Fox News, O’Neill said he has lost “a lot of business,” adding: “There was a point in my career where I was doing 300 speeches a year, anywhere from 250 to 300 speeches and so many cities a year, and now it’s just dried up, because it looks bad that it didn’t happen.”

In the lawsuit, O’Neill alleged that the hotel “willfully, recklessly and negligently hired and retained Loomis as a security guard despite his known history of violence and making false allegations of violence and misconduct toward hotel guests.”

O’Neill told Fox News that he had had a drink that night, after a long day that included giving a speech.

He admitted that he had fallen asleep in the hotel bar and that he had encountered Loomis on the way back to his room.

He said he never touched Loomis and denied using the racial slur.

O’Neill told the newspaper that he was confused by Loomis’ allegations.

“It wasn’t until later that I found out that I had been accused not only of assault, but of using a racial slur,” he told Fox News. “And that was odd to me, and this guy who was walking me up to him, a middle-aged white guy, in his 60s, and all of a sudden he’s claiming that he was assaulted and using a racial slur, which I just find ridiculous when you’re two guys alone in a hallway.”