Las Vegas police investigating double homicide

Las Vegas police on Monday night were investigating a double homicide that occurred earlier in the day in a western Las Vegas Valley neighborhood.

At around 1:53 p.m. Monday, a neighbor called the Metropolitan Police Department about a body in the front yard of a home on the 7300 block of Newcrest Circle, Capt. Robert Plummer said. Upon further investigation, police found a second body inside the home.

The deceased men are believed to be in their 40s or 50s and to be roommates in one of the homes on the block, Plummer said. Their cause of death is unknown, he added.

“There’s a lot of blood on the scene,” Plummer said. “That’s all we know right now.”

For the investigation’s first few hours, police believed a suspect was in the area. Plummer said. But they’ve not identified anyone definitively and continue to search, he added.

“We know there’s a suspect out there. We just don’t know who,” Plummer said. “There’s numerous reports that there was another vehicle that left, numerous reports that there was someone in the neighborhood, we’re running all those things now.”

As police prepared to investigate the scene into the night and early morning, neighboring residents were barred from leaving or returning to their homes.

“As soon as we get the first body out of the grassy area, we’ll open up the streets so folks can go home,” he said, adding that parents and their children called police after seeing the first body in the front yard.

A little before 6 p.m., a 12-year-old riding his scooter around the neighborhood stopped at the crime scene tape.

“I’m trying to talk to my friend,” said the boy, who did not give his name, adding that the friend had found the corpses.

The boy on the scooter said he and his friend frequented that street, often stopping to talk to one of the men who lived in the house where the bodies were found.

Neighbors described the roommates as friendly men who always yelled “Hi!” from across the street.

Andrew Holguin lives across the street from the crime scene. He remembered when one of the men in the house gave him a strange fruit from his garden. He had to plug his nose as he took a bite.

He said one of the men in the house had lived there for 15 years, and the other hadn’t lived there as long.

On Monday, Holguin said he received a call from a neighbor that there was a body in the flowerbed. The neighbor thought it might have been a Halloween decoration.

But Holguin knew the neighbor didn’t decorate for Halloween. He rushed to the block on the cul-de-sac and saw the body, facedown in the flowers. The home’s door was wide open.

“They got that place lit up like the Luxor,” Holguin said, still in shock that something like this would happen on his block.

Holguin’s daughter, Charlcie Holguin, stood by the crime scene tape.

“It just shows it can happen anywhere,” Charlcie Holguin, 26, said.

She remembered the neighbors’ good nature and how they used to light fireworks on the street on the Fourth of July. Once, the longtime neighbor saw her leaving the house and shouted, “Make bad choices.” She laughed.

The two deaths were the 217th and 218th homicides in Clark County this year, and the 189th and 190th investigated by Metro.

Contact Briana Erickson at berickson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5244. Follow @brianarerick on Twitter. Staff writer Rio Lacanlale contributed.