Man threatened mass shootings at Las Vegas hospitals, report says
A Texas man was arrested this month after he admitted to threatening mass shootings at Las Vegas Valley hospitals, according to an arrest report.
On Aug. 30, a nurse from Spring Valley Hospital Medical Center called police to report a call from a man who said he’d been treated poorly at the hospital recently. She said the man told her “a lot of people are going to die” when he came to town the following week, the Metropolitan Police Department report said.
The man, who identified himself as Nicholas Duran, told the nurse he planned to shoot three hospitals that had allegedly treated him poorly when he lived in Las Vegas a year ago, the report said.
Police used phone records to identify the man as 33-year-old Nicholas Encinias. Duran is his mother’s maiden name, the report said.
Encinias was living in Austin, Texas, at the time of his Sept. 4 arrest on a charge of making terroristic threats. He told police he never stayed anywhere long, because “if he stays in one place, he might go hurt someone.”
He told police he’d been diagnosed with psychosis and bipolar disorder, blaming mental illnesses for his desire to shoot people. But he said he was seeking help, because “he did not want his 6-year-old daughter to have to live with that for the rest of her life,” the report said.
According to the report, Encinias bragged to police about being investigated by the Secret Service and the FBI for making threats. A Metro investigation found that he had many run-ins with law enforcement around the country involving mass shooting threats.
Encinias had been arrested by Austin police in late August after he was found wandering the downtown streets with his face painted like the Joker from the “Batman” movies, with a “realistic looking airsoft pistol” hanging out of his backpack.
Police said Encinias is well-known in Austin for walking the streets in a full military uniform and telling anyone who walked by that he was going to commit a mass shooting. He told police the only reason he has not committed a mass shooting yet is because he can’t afford a gun.
Encinias is being held at the Clark County Detention Center on $500,000 bail. A court hearing is set for Sept. 30.
Contact Alexis Egeland at aegeland@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0335. Follow @alexis_egeland on Twitter.
