‘I’m going to shoot him ma’am’: 911 calls paint clear picture of killing
A woman breathlessly asked a 911 dispatcher what she should do after her ex-husband broke into her Henderson home and held a gun to her boyfriend’s head.
“He has a gun to my boyfriend’s head, ma’am, what do I do, what do I do?” she could be heard frantically asking the dispatcher.
At about 4:30 a.m. March 23, Cameron Pinson of Henderson had smashed the window of a home in the 2900 block of Seasons Avenue while Gamarae Wright was on the phone with the dispatcher.
This month, Las Vegas police released two 911 calls from the encounter, which occurred in a residential neighborhood near the border of Henderson and Las Vegas. The audio painted a picture of the moments leading up to a shooting that left Pinson, 31, dead inside his ex-wife’s home.
Metropolitan Police Department homicide Lt. Ray Spencer said that on the same morning of the shooting he reviewed the 911 calls, which recorded screams, gunshots and the sound of a window being broken and offered investigators enough evidence not to pursue charges against the woman.
“This is a unique situation where you have a 911 call that captures pretty much the entire incident from beginning all the way to end,” he said. “So it is unique in the sense that you don’t usually have that type of evidence, outside of video, in a case like this.”
At one point in the call, the dispatcher asked Wright if anyone was armed with a gun.
“I do,” she said. “I have a weapon.”
Pinson could be heard yelling in the background as Wright attempted to explain to the dispatcher what was happening. She told dispatch that Pinson had left the house after breaking in but soon returned with a gun.
About three minutes into the call, a window could be heard breaking in the background.
“Oh my God! He’s busting all my windows,” the woman told the dispatcher before apparently yelling at Pinson. “Get out of my house! Get out of my house!”
Pinson’s brother, Carl Pinson, and mother, Cheryl De’Bato, identified Wright as the woman who shot Pinson, though Spencer would not identify the woman but said it was Pinson’s ex-wife.
Pinson’s name appears on Clark County Family Court divorce records with the names Gamarae Pinson and Gamarae Wright.
Spencer said there were three children in the home when the shooting happened: one toddler and two “school age children.” He would not provide specific ages.
After Pinson returned to the home with a gun, Wright asked the dispatcher several times, “What do I do?”
“I’m going to shoot him, ma’am,” she said.
About 30 seconds later, a single gunshot could be heard before she started crying.
“I shot him, ma’am, he’s down,” Wright said about a minute later.
At around 4:35 a.m., a 9-year-old girl called 911 from inside the home.
“I’m very scared,” she said.
Wright could be heard in the background of the girl’s call as a different dispatcher tried to have the girl explain what was happening.
“He has a gun on my mom’s friend’s head,” the girl said. “Cameron Pinson has a gun to his head.”
After the shot was fired, the girl said that Pinson was “gone,” to which the dispatcher asked “gone where?”
“He’s not even alive now. … He’s on the floor laying down,” she said.
Spencer said video also captured Pinson retrieving a handgun from his car and walking back to the house.
In the days leading up to the shooting, Pinson sent Wright emails that suggested he was upset with how their relationship ended, which Spencer said would “bolster a claim of self-defense.”
While an investigation into the slaying remained open, Spencer said charges were not expected to be filed against Wright. He said the case has not been sent to the district attorney’s office, which is tasked with deciding whether criminal charges will be filed.
Pinson’s stepfather, Chris De’Bato, listened to the 911 calls and said what happened “appears to be clear cut.”
“We understand that he should not have gone over there,” De’Bato said. “He should not have broken the window. He should not have brought a gun into play.”
He said that if Pinson had let him or any other family members know what he was going to do, the family would have done anything to stop him.
“The hard part for me is that first of all I don’t want to believe it, and that’s just natural,” De’Bato said. “I don’t want to believe that she had any right to kill him and murder him, but at the same time by law she did.”
Contact David Wilson at dwilson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @davidwilson_RJ on Twitter.
