Murder suspect used steel bar before stabbing, report says

A man arrested last week on a murder charge beat another man with a steel bar and stabbed him before covering the body with a blanket and leaving it in the desert, according to a Las Vegas police report.

Mauricio Milla, 49, was arrested July 16 and charged with open murder with use of a deadly weapon in the death of Mahadi Alrekaby, 52, who was found in the desert May 31, according to an arrest report from the Metropolitan Police Department.

Police were alerted around 11 a.m. May 31 to a body decomposing in the desert near Searles Avenue and 23rd Street, near Eastern and Washington avenues, police said.

“The body was in the advanced stage of decomposition and had been dead for several days,” according to the arrest report.

There was also a 4-foot steel bar at the scene, which witnesses told police Alrekaby and Milla had both used to hit each other during a fight over meth sometime in May, police said.

Milla allegedly came back later that night to where Alrekaby was sleeping in the desert and stabbed him before leaving a blanket over him, witnesses told police.

Alrekaby died of head and neck trauma, and his death was ruled a homicide, according to the Clark County coroner’s office.

Police put out a warrant for Milla’s arrest July 7 and found him a week later after an attempted larceny at a Jack in the Box on Nellis Boulevard, the report said.

Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter.