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Apartment complex agrees to pay $11M to family of homicide victim

Updated June 3, 2022 - 3:44 pm

A Las Vegas apartment complex has agreed to pay $11 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of a man who was fatally shot on the property, according to court records.

Jamie Arnold, 36, was on his way back to his Shelter Island apartment, at 3770 Swenson St., after stopping at a nearby 7-Eleven around 5:45 a.m. on April 7, 2019. When he got to the parking lot of his complex, police records show, he was shot multiple times.

He died four days later at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, police said, and his case remained unsolved Friday.

In a lawsuit filed in March 2020 on behalf of Arnold’s father, Glenn Bension, attorneys Phillip Smith and Brittany Llewellyn claimed Advanced Management Group Nevada and Shelter Island Apartments did not warn Arnold of the dangers at the apartment complex, which is near UNLV. The portion of Swenson Street where the complex is located is now named University Center Drive.

The lawsuit claimed gross negligence, wrongful death, and negligent hiring, supervision and training of employees.

History of violent crime

“Based on the extensive number of violent crimes committed at Shelter Island Apartments in the recent past, Decedent Jamie Arnold’s injuries and death were foreseeable to a reasonable person acting as an employee of the Defendant,” the lawsuit read.

Records maintained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal indicate that between January 2017 and Friday, 20 people were killed in the area of Twain Avenue and University Center. The block also houses Apex Apartments, which is under investigation for operating without a license. The district attorney’s office filed a complaint April 21 against Apex Las Vegas LLC and its owners, Dave Sumail and Pratik Jogani.

Clark County Commissioners said in April that Apex Apartments, at 905 and 955 E. Twain Ave., was the source of 694 calls for service, three homicides and 18 shootings in the past year. A week after the commissioners met, 46-year-old Christopher David was fatally shot in the courtyard.

Court records show that on May 17, a judge approved the “good faith settlement” offer by Shelter Island of $11 million to Arnold’s family, which will come from the company’s insurance.

“Counsel for all parties participated in approximately 10 depositions, ordered and reviewed voluminous sets of medical records, thousands of pages of incident reports, served and responded to written discovery,” the settlement read.

Alan Holcomb, who represented the family at the time of the settlement, said he could not discuss the case because trial was still scheduled for January against Advanced Management Group Nevada, the management company for the apartment complex.

Advanced Management Group also managed Harbor Island Apartments, at 370 E. Harmon Ave., and court records show a separate civil case filed by a woman who is awaiting trial after alleging that negligence by management and security led to her being raped on the property.

The woman said she was walking back to her apartment at Harbor Island around 9:15 p.m. on Sept. 15, 2019, when she was dragged by her backpack into an open apartment, according to a criminal complaint.

The woman told police that her feet remained outside the open front door and that she screamed the entire time Michael Skinner was attacking her, according to the arrest report filed in the criminal case against Skinner.

Skinner, who was a registered sex offender from California, pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault in March 2020 and was sentenced to at least eight years in prison.

Two months after he was sentenced, the woman sued the management company and accused it of failing to deter criminal activity.

The case continues to be delayed because the victim requested all incident reports and eyewitness accounts of crimes on the property between September 2014 and September 2019.

Lawyers for the management group argued that the 588 reports were too many to fulfill and not necessary for the case. The victim’s attorney, Daniel Ryan, declined to comment.

The case is tentatively scheduled for trial in January.

Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter.

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