Father charged with attempted murder over alleged betrayal

The saga of the Harrimans began more than a year ago. The conflict between father and son started over money, escalated because of a woman and erupted after angry accusations of betrayal.

Police say tensions boiled over in August, when the desperate father hired a hit man to gun down his son.

Now, the son — who survived the shooting — is in hiding. His father, who walked free for months as police unraveled the mystery, is in jail awaiting trial on a charge of attempted murder.

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THE SON, Dominick Harriman, 27, survived nine gunshot wounds, emergency surgery and a two and a half week recovery at University Medical Center.

THE FATHER, Keith Harriman, 48, was arrested Jan. 14 and booked at Clark County Detention Center. He awaits trial on 19 felony charges stemming from his son’s shooting.

Harriman, with blond-tipped hair and shackled hands, stood silently at an appearance Monday in Las Vegas Justice Court, where his attorney, Gary Guymon, argued for a reduction in his $500,000 bail.

The judge denied the request and set a preliminary hearing for Feb. 2.

Dominick Harriman, although recovered from the shooting, did not attend the hearing.

Tina Griffin, Dominick’s mother and Keith’s ex-wife, did attend the hearing with her family, including another ex-husband, Dominick’s former stepfather, Jeffrey Lonergan.

Griffin said she wanted to be a "voice" for Dominick, who was not in the right frame of mind to face his father.

"This is a guy he (Dominick) was supposed to trust, no matter what happened," Griffin said. "It’s a vulnerable state to be in when you have a parent trying to kill you."

Lonergan said Dominick, whom he said he helped raise, was in hiding because the family believes his life remains in danger.

"They’re still after him," he said. "We think the hit is still on."

But why would a father, no matter the reason, hire somebody to kill his son?

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According to a Las Vegas police report, the story began in September 2009, when Keith Harriman, who owned the Used Car Factory on South Highland Drive near the Strip, filed a burglary report on his home to the Henderson Police Department and a claim for a loss of more than $160,000 with Allstate Insurance. The claim was deemed suspicious and immediately red-flagged by Allstate, which began a civil investigation, the report said.

In March 2010, Dominick Harriman told insurance investigators that his father had staged the burglary and filed a false claim because of substantial debts, including unpaid markers to various Las Vegas casinos, $500,000 owed to an unknown car auctioneer, the foreclosure of his Henderson home and an addiction to cocaine, the report said.

Dominick told investigators he was afraid to testify against his dad. He suspected he would be shot because he was "throwing Keith under the bus," the report said.

Allstate representatives later told police that Dominick was the chief witness in their civil investigation. Without Dominick’s testimony, Keith stood to receive the $160,000 payout, the report said.

Griffin said Dominick went to the insurance company out of concern for his dad, who was reportedly addicted to cocaine and was arrested on a drug possession charge in September. Prosecutors never charged him because of insufficient evidence.

Although Dominick testified to investigators in March, the animosity began a month earlier, when Keith discovered Dominick was sleeping with his ex-girlfriend, Rena Nikolopoulos, 31.

After the affair was uncovered, Keith began telling his daughter, Patricia Harriman, that he was going to have Dominick killed, the police report said.

When detectives contacted Patricia several days after Dominick’s shooting, she immediately implicated her father.

She told investigators that Keith said: "I’ll do the seven years. It’s only a crime of passion, so that means it’s only gonna be seven years and I’ll do the time," the report said.

Keith continued: "I’m gonna send (expletive) down to the car lot to shoot your brother. Don’t stand close to Dom," she told detectives.

One of Patricia’s friends was present when Keith allegedly made threats. In a separate interview, the friend corroborated her statements.

She heard Keith say, "Watch out at the car lot," the report said.

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The woman in the middle, Nikolopoulos, was interviewed by police twice after the shooting. She told police she’d ended the relationship with Keith in the middle of 2009 and began dating Dominick. They secretly dated for eight months before Keith found out, she said.

Nikolopoulos told detectives she called Dominick a week before the shooting. She was frightened, and they discussed breaking off the relationship, because Keith was angry and "is going to kill one of us, either you or me."

She told police Keith knew Dominick had testified against him and was "ratting him out."

According to a police report Dominick filed against Keith on April 10, Dominick received several threatening phone calls from his father.

"I’m sending two black guys to your job today to bash in your face and shoot you," Dominick said his father told him.

Dominick later told police that Keith said: "I don’t care if you (expletive) Rena. You could have told me. I don’t care. But you (expletive) me over," Dominick said, referring to his testimony.

Tina Griffin said ex-husband Keith was mad about Nikolopoulos, but furious about the testimony, which he viewed as a betrayal. He constantly referred to their son as a "rat," she said.

"This wasn’t about a broken heart," she said. "This was about a broken wallet. Money is all he cared about."

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About 3:30 p.m. on Aug. 27, a Friday, Dominick was sitting outside Nice Cars of Nevada at 3401 S. Decatur Blvd., where he worked.

A co-worker, Miguel Saca, told police he was smoking a cigarette when he noticed a masked black male adult with a handgun creep from the northeast corner of the building toward Dominick.

A total of nine shots, from less than 5 feet away, struck Dominick’s chest, abdomen, back and arm, which he’d used to shield his face.

"He had holes all through his back. It was just through the power of prayer that he made it through," said Griffin, recalling the days after the shooting.

Saca, who was struck in the foot by a bullet, told police he never heard the shooter yell or say anything before, during or after the shooting.

Four months before the shooting, Dominick learned that his father was trying to pay someone to shoot him and had been introduced to a hit man by Carl Lomax, who worked at Keith’s car lot, according to the police report.

Detectives later identified a man named Jeffrey Todd West as the Lomax associate. West had previous convictions for murder in Las Vegas.

As of Monday, neither West nor Lomax had been arrested or charged in the shooting.

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Outside the courtroom Tina Griffin said her family’s life has been hell since the shooting.

"You’re supposed to be able to trust your dad," she said. "We can never trust him again. And I have no idea what guys he has working for him who aren’t locked up."

Although she described Dominick as a "great kid," she volunteered that he has had several run-ins with the law. He was arrested in Pahrump on a charge of possession of a controlled substance in 2005, and he pleaded guilty to attempted possession of a controlled substance in Las Vegas the same year.

He also was identified by police in 2003 as a member of the 311 Boyz and was arrested in the rock-throwing incident that left teenager Stephen Tanner Hansen maimed after a party.

In a plea agreement, he did not contest a charge of conspiracy to commit coercion and was given one year of probation and a $2,000 fine.

Griffin said Dominick never was a gang member and never threw a rock. The police deemed him guilty by association, she said.

"We told him not to go to that party," she said. She blamed the drug charges on Keith and his associates.

"He was constantly putting Dominick in harm’s way, getting him in trouble," she said.

But Griffin said she never believed the man she married — and divorced, about 15 years ago — was capable of such malice, although she never thought he was a good father.

"This has torn up my whole family," she said. "It was worth me coming, just to see him in shackles."

Contact reporter Mike Blasky at mblasky@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0283.