DA’s office preliminarily determines highway patrol shooting of Las Vegas man was justified
The fatal shooting of a Las Vegas man by a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper last year has been preliminarily deemed justified by the Clark County District Attorney’s office.
The county held a public fact-finding review Friday morning on the shooting of Matthew Gibbon, 41, on Boulder Highway near U.S. Highway 95 just after midnight Aug. 26.
Detective Marc Colon, with the Las Vegas police force investigation team, laid out the results of the department’s investigation of the shooting.
The incident started at a nearby bar, where Gibbon told a man he would give him some methamphetamine in exchange for a ride, Colon said.
Gibbon got into the back seat of a white Cadillac, which was quickly pulled over by trooper Shawn Peckham for not having a registration sticker on the back license plate.
Gibbon got out of the car and ran off while Peckham was checking everyone’s records in his patrol car. Footage from Peckham’s dashboard camera shows the man getting out of the car with a backpack, clutching a gun in his right hand. Colon said Gibbon fired two shots at Peckham, one of which struck the trooper’s badge.
Peckham fired five rounds, called in “shots fired,” and fired six more rounds. Colon said the man turned and pointed his weapon at Peckham three times during the encounter.
Gibbon was struck in the hand and head. His autopsy showed he had methamphetamine in his system, and 52 grams of the drug were found in his backpack, Colon said.
No one from the public spoke at the meeting. The next public fact-finding review will be held March 20 on the highway patrol-involved shooting of Javier Munoz in October.
Contact Wesley Juhl at wjuhl;@reviewjournal.com and 702-383-0391. Follow @WesJuhl on Twitter.
