Facebook photo helps Las Vegas police make arrest in killing of homeless man

Las Vegas police have a key piece of evidence in the November killing of a homeless man: a photo the suspect posted on Facebook the day after the shooting death.

According to an arrest report, the photo shows the suspect near the scene of the crime, loading a gun with bullets similar to those used in the fatal shooting.

Police say the killing, in which the victim was shot and left to die just north of downtown Las Vegas, was random.

“This is a crime that should bother all of us,” Metropolitan Police Department Capt. Andy Walsh said that day. “This isn’t a homeless guy in a sleeping bag on the sidewalk. This is a human being.”

Mario Velasco, 26, was already being held at the Clark County Detention Center when he was booked in January on a murder charge in connection with the death.

Velasco was arrested Dec. 7 and accused of breaking into a woman’s home with his cousin Nov. 8 — two days before the homeless man was killed — and repeatedly pistol-whipping her. The injured woman identified both Velasco and his cousin by name at the time.

The incidents were not related. But through a series of small, separate details, detectives built a case against Velasco as a suspect in the Nov. 10 death of Michael Tzaras, 46, who was shot once in the chest.

NO WITNESSES

The morning of the shooting, which happened sometime between 3:30 a.m. and 4 a.m., Tzaras had been sleeping on the sidewalk just north of Woodlawn Cemetery, on the southeast corner of Owens Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard North.

After the shooting, a man sleeping next to Tzaras woke up to see Tzaras on his knees, grasping at his chest and back, the report said.

The man did not see a shooter or anyone fleeing the area, but he ran across the street to Catholic Charities of Nevada and asked to use a phone to call 911.

A guard at the food pantry told the man to use a nearby pay phone instead. The man called 911 two or three times on the pay phone before officers arrived shortly after 4 a.m., the report said.

Tzaras was taken to University Medical Center, where he later died.

No one witnessed the shooting. With little evidence, detectives canvassed the area a few days after Tzaras died and gathered a few clues.

A woman’s apartment had been shot into about two hours before Tzaras died. The woman heard the gunfire but did not see a shooter.

Detectives later learned that Velasco had been injured in a March shooting, and Velasco’s girlfriend told police at the time that Velasco’s shooter was her sister’s boyfriend, Johnathon Jackson.

The apartment shot into Nov. 10 was that of Jackson’s girlfriend, the sister of Velasco’s girlfriend, which detectives noted in the report.

But there was more. On Nov. 8, the day the woman was pistol-whipped in her apartment, police responded to a separate attempted robbery call. Two men had tried to rob two women.

During the incident, the women believed the men, who matched the description of the Velasco cousins, were joking. The women ignored the men and crossed the street, so one of the men, who matched Mario Velasco’s description, unloaded several rounds in their direction.

The women were not hurt, but the casings from the incident matched the casing collected Nov. 10 after Tzaras was killed. The casings from the Nov. 10 apartment shooting also matched the casing at the homicide scene.

ANONYMOUS TIP

An anonymous caller tipped police off to the Nov. 11 Facebook photo Velasco posted. It was taken at Woodlawn Cemetery, near where Tzaras was shot.

Phone records requested by police also showed Velasco’s phone was in the area of each shooting about the same time of each shooting, though they could not pinpoint his exact location.

With that evidence, police booked Velasco on a charge of murder with a deadly weapon, as well as numerous charges related to the other crimes.

Velasco’s criminal history includes an attempted murder charge in 2004, a robbery with a deadly weapon charge in 2010 and a domestic battery charge in 2014, according to court records.

Police said his sister, Alyssa Velasco, 27, was killed in a double homicide Jan. 18.

Contact Rachel Crosby at rcrosby@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Follow @rachelacrosby on Twitter.