Injured son ID’s father charged in Las Vegas stabbing

When Child Protective Services employees entered a Las Vegas extended-stay apartment the morning of Nov. 20, they found a 12-year-old girl and her 15-year-old brother on the living room floor.

The employees and apartment complex management alerted police about 11:20 a.m. and tried to help the girl, Navaeh Maddox, according to court documents obtained Friday, but it was too late.

“She was cold to the touch and had no pulse,” a Metropolitan Police Department officer wrote in an arrest warrant. Her brother had a pulse, but his breathing was shallow.

Police previously accused their father, Marcus Maddox, of first attacking the children, driving across town to the 5200 block of East Craig Road, nearly beating his wife to death and then shooting himself in the head while speaking with police dispatchers. Prosecutors charged him with attempted murder and three other counts in the attack on his wife.

But it wasn’t until Jan. 18, documents show, that prosecutors charged Maddox, 30, with murder in his daughter’s death and attempted murder in his son’s attack.

The warrant said authorities didn’t know of the children’s conditions until about 17 hours after Maddox tried to kill his wife and himself when the Child Protective Services workers arrived outside a room at the Budget Suites on the 8400 block of Las Vegas Boulevard South to check on them.

When they knocked, neither child answered the door, the warrant said. They then spoke with complex management, who used a master key to open the door. They found the girl’s body lying on the floor and her brother sitting on the floor to the east of her.

Her brother was hospitalized in critical condition with stab wounds and a broken skull at University Medical Center, where his mother and father were also taken in critical condition the previous night, Nov. 19.

On Jan. 9, detectives spoke to the brother at the rehabilitation facility at which he was staying, the warrant said.

According to the warrant, the brother “was able to communicate through (gestures) and limited verbal means.” The warrant said he acknowledged he and his sister were home together, and that his father attacked them.

Police recovered a knife at the scene. It appeared to have been rinsed, the warrant said, but police later discovered the children’s DNA on the blade.

Contact Mike Shoro at mshoro@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Follow @mike_shoro on Twitter.