Man booked in Las Vegas for alleged ax attack at homeless camp
A 20-year-old man was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on Oct. 10 after police said he attacked a man with an ax.
Officers responded to Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center on April 4 to find a man suffering from eight lacerations on his head and face, resulting in 27 stitches and 16 staples. He told police he’d been attacked by Anthony Alvarez, who had shown up a few days prior at the homeless camp where he slept, near U.S. Highway 95 and Flamingo Road.
On April 5, officers located a tent in the area that was covered in blood. They found the man from the hospital inside, who told them that Alvarez had been stealing. The man told police that he had said Alvarez was welcome to stay in their camp, but he needed to leave people’s things alone.
After his conversation with Alvarez, the man told police, he walked to a nearby 7-Eleven. When he returned, he found Alvarez sleeping on his bed. When the man asked him to leave, Alvarez jumped out of the bed and attacked him with the ax, telling him he was going to die, according to the report.
The man said he walked onto Flamingo Road, trying to flag down help. Another man from the camp told police that Alvarez was violent and appeared to be “either ‘mentally disturbed’ or ‘on drugs,’” according to the report. Alvarez was arrested on a charge of attempted murder with a deadly weapon on April 10.
Alvarez was sent to Lake’s Crossing, a maximum security psychiatric facility in Northern Nevada, and was moved to the Clark County Detention Center on Oct. 10. The Las Vegas Review-Journal requested his arrest report the following day. He has a competency hearing set for Friday.
Contact Alexis Egeland at aegeland@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0335. Follow @alexis_egeland on Twitter.