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Anonymous source leads Las Vegas police to murder suspect

An anonymous source helped lead police to a 28-year-old man suspected of beating a man to death in June, according to an arrest report.

Christopher Cruz, who was arrested Friday, is charged with open murder, robbery and grand larceny of a motor vehicle, according to court records.

Officers were called just after 2 a.m. June 5 to the intersection of North Fourth Street and East Adams Avenue where a body was found, the Metropolitan Police Department report said.

The victim was identified as 56-year-old Anthony Martin, who died of hypertensive type cardiovascular disease, exacerbated by a stressful altercation and drug intoxication, according to the Clark County coroner’s office. His death was ruled a homicide.

Investigators spent the summer interviewing Martin’s family, who said he lived in Chicago but was taking his truck in for service in body shops in Victorville, California, and Las Vegas.

Detectives received a call in August from an anonymous person who said Cruz asked them for money and showed them news articles about Martin’s death.

“That was me,” the source told police Cruz said. “I did it with my hands.”

The source told police a woman they arrested in Martin’s truck in an unrelated traffic stop over the summer was also involved in the beating, but her name was redacted from the report and she had not been charged in the death as of Friday, according to homicide logs maintained by Metro.

Cruz told the source he got into a fight with Martin over drugs but that he was confident “that the police did not have enough evidence to charge him with (Martin’s) murder.”

Cruz has two prior misdemeanor convictions dating to 2017 for drug trafficking, according to Las Vegas Justice Court records.

He is being held without bail pending a hearing Wednesday.

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

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