Woman shot, suspect in custody after officer-involved shooting

A woman suffered multiple gunshot wounds at a business Wednesday morning before Las Vegas police chased a suspect and took him into custody following about 90 minutes of negotiations.

Capt. Nichole Splinter said police received a report at about 9:15 a.m. of a shooting at a bank. Police then responded to the Navy Federal Credit Union at 6975 Spring Mountain Road and began chasing the suspect, who fled north on foot.

“One officer fired several shots at the suspect, who subsequently kept running and ultimately barricaded himself in a parking lot,” Splinter said.

Splinter told reporters she did not know whether the suspect was wounded. Police said the female victim underwent surgery Wednesday and was in stable condition as of about 3:40 p.m.

Police said crisis negotiators and SWAT officers responded to a parking lot near Rainbow Boulevard and Desert Inn Road and safely took the suspect into custody after about 90 minutes of negotiations. During the negotiations, police described the situation as an “open-field barricade.”

Police taped off a large crime scene Wednesday morning around the credit union, and witnesses reported seeing a woman being wheeled out of the business on a stretcher.

“We are asking citizens to stay away from the area for safety reasons,” police said in a tweet at 9:47 a.m.

Rainbow was closed in both directions between Sahara Avenue and Desert Inn Road before the suspect, who has not been identified, was taken into custody.

Spring Valley High School’s student newspaper tweeted around 10:45 a.m. that the school had been placed on a soft lockdown due to the shooting. The school’s principal said the lockdown had been lifted by noon.

Steven Wilt and Dean Reese said they happened upon the scene Wednesday morning when they came to do banking at Navy Federal.

“As we were pulling in, we saw two people running — a male and a female — and the female was screaming, ‘Help! Help! Call 911!’” Reese told the Las Vegas Review-Journal at the scene.

He said the woman looked terrified.

After parking, Wilt headed to the credit union before a man yelled, “Stay out of the bank!” He said he and Reese then joined in the effort to keep people out of the business before police arrived.

“What we had heard from the group that was hanging out that were apparently in the bank or around the bank, one of the tellers had got shot in the face, there was some broken glass, and a man had run out with a gun,” Reese said. “We were probably about a minute, a minute and a half after that.”

Darlene Thompson of Las Vegas told the Review-Journal at the scene that she is a regular customer of the credit union. She said she showed up at 10:30 a.m. to get a cashier’s check and saw the business surrounded by police with crime scene tape barring entry.

She said all the people who work at the credit union are wonderful people, and she was shocked to hear that a crime had occurred there.

“As soon as you walk in, they greet you,” Thompson said. “They are like family. This breaks my heart. I can’t even imagine.”

Contact Alexis Egeland at aegeland@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0335. Follow @alexis_egeland on Twitter. Contact Glenn Puit at gpuit@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0390. Follow @GlennatRJ on Twitter. Review-Journal staff writer Aleksandra Appleton contributed to this report.