String of shootings in Las Vegas Valley leaves 4 dead, 1 critical

A string of shootings over a 12-hour period left four people dead and one critically injured across the Las Vegas Valley.

The deaths marked the 177th, 178th, 179th and 180th homicides in Clark County this year, records maintained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal show. The newspaper tracks all homicides in the county, including police shootings and acts of self-defense.

The spate of gun violence began at 9:40 p.m. Friday in North Las Vegas, when a 20-year-old man was found fatally shot in the torso on the 3300 block of Civic Center Drive.

Police believe that the man had been outside an apartment talking with a group of people when a suspect opened fire. North Las Vegas detectives believe that the victim had been targeted, although a motive had not yet been identified as of Saturday. The shooter remains at large.

Then, shortly after midnight Saturday, a man was killed by Las Vegas police during an encounter in a neighborhood near Warm Springs Road and Decatur Boulevard.

A resident had called 911 to report a man walking through the neighborhood holding a tool. When police arrived, they found the man on the 5400 block of Tinker Toy Avenue.

Police spoke with the man for about five minutes before opening fire, police said. They asked the man to drop what the department described as a weapon, and two officers fired when the man started to “advance against officers,” Metropolitan Police Department Capt. Nichole Splinter said.

She did not say what the man was holding during a Saturday morning press conference.

The man died at the scene, marking Metro’s 21st shooting involving police this year. Eleven of those shootings were fatal, Review-Journal records show.

Just over an hour later in the northeast valley, another gunshot victim — this time a male in his late teens — was found lying in the road with multiple gunshot wounds in a residential area near Pecos Road and Haddock Avenue.

Metro homicide investigators believe that two men were involved in the shooting, Lt. Ray Spencer said, but the department did not immediately release a description of the suspects.

A third deadly shooting unfolded early Saturday while detectives were still investigating on Pecos Road. It was about 1:10 a.m. when officers were called to a bar on the 3400 block of Nellis Boulevard, north of Cheyenne Avenue.

There, they found a man in his late 30s dead. A woman shot her ex-boyfriend in what Metro is calling an act of self-defense. The woman had an active protective order against him, Spencer said.

A review of surveillance footage inside the bar showed the man had “made a movement toward the back of his pants, and the female pulled out a firearm and shot him inside the bar,” Spencer said. The woman was released after questioning, police said.

At 8:15 a.m., Spencer was again called to investigate a shooting on the 6000 block of Conroe Court that left a man in critical condition. Homicide detectives took over the investigation because of the severity of the man’s injuries.

Police determined that the man who was shot had gone to a house on Conroe Court to confront another man about an earlier fight involving him and multiple women at a Strip hotel. One of those women was the man’s girlfriend, police said.

The two men got into a fight, which ended when the Conroe Court resident allegedly opened fire on the boyfriend. The suspect took off before police arrived. It was not clear Saturday night whether he remained at large.

The boyfriend, a man in his late 20s, was in “extremely” critical condition as of late Saturday morning, Spencer said.

The four men will be identified by the Clark County coroner’s office once their families have been identified.

Contact Rio Lacanlale at rlacanlale@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @riolacanlale on Twitter.