18-year-old man chased, fatally shot in North Las Vegas
An 18-year-old man was chased and gunned down Christmas Eve in a North Las Vegas parking lot, police said.
The man was running from somebody — the shooter, police think — when people reported gunshots about 4:45 p.m. Monday in a parking lot near East Lake Mead Boulevard and McDaniel Street, west of Civic Center Drive, North Las Vegas police spokesman Eric Leavitt said.
The man was shot in a lot to the west of a pharmacy. Bystanders and officers attempted to help him, but he died at the scene, Leavitt said.
The shooter jumped a wall to the south of the pharmacy and into a neighborhood. A search of the neighborhood failed to turn up the shooter, Leavitt said, but detectives think they have some good leads as to the shooter’s identity and were prepared to work through the night.
“They’re gonna probably miss Christmas, and they’re gonna track this person down because that’s what needs to be done,” Leavitt said.
A woman with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders repeatedly cried and occasionally wailed “my baby” as other loved ones gathered in the parking lot. An orange barricade within the taped-off parking lot shrouded the man’s body from the public view.
Police were investigating what led up to the shooting. It wasn’t clear from where the shooter and man were running or what they were doing in the area, Leavitt said.
It appeared the two knew one another prior to the deadly shooting, but police were still investigating how. The shooting didn’t appear to have a gang or narcotics connection, Leavitt said.
The Clark County coroner’s office will release the deceased’s identity.
Police were interviewing witnesses Monday night. Leavitt asked for anybody who had additional information or was at the scene to call North Las Vegas police at 702-633-9111 or Crime Stoppers at 702-385-5555 to remain anonymous.
“We’ll take any leads that we can at this point and we’ll track down every one of them,” Leavitt said.
About a mile east and about four hours earlier, a woman was killed and a 13-year-old girl was critically hurt in a crash near Lake Mead and Palmer Street. The woman died at the scene. The teenager was expected to survive.
Contact Mike Shoro at mshoro@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Follow @mike_shoro on Twitter.
