Frank Curreri
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Copyright 2005 DR Partners d/b/a Las Vegas Review-Journal
All Rights Reserved
A Las Vegas police officer on Monday shot and killed a suspected kidnapper who threatened to kill his ex-girlfriend and himself, authorities said.
An officer had spoken with the suicidal man on his cell phone and tried to negotiate with him, but could not calm him nor convince him to surrender peacefully, said police Capt. James Dillon.
However, the suspect gave the officer a key piece of information by revealing where he was located - at a remote part of Lake Mead National Recreational Area called Crawdad Cove, located about 10 miles or so beyond the gated visitor’s main entrance.
Officers and a SWAT team rushed to the scene and discovered the suspect inside a vehicle.
The entire sequence of events that happened next were unclear late Monday afternoon, save for the deadly conclusion.
“The suspect was brandishing a weapon ... At one point, the officer fired a single shot, striking and killing the suspect,” Dillon said.
Sgt. Chris Jones, a police spokesman, said the female victim was uninjured but he did not know if she was inside the vehicle when the shooting occurred.
The woman confirmed that her ex-boyfriend had been armed, police said, but Jones said he was unaware of whether investigators had recovered a weapon and, if so, its type.
The identity of the suspect, and the officer who shot him were unavailable late Monday.
Las Vegas police policy allows the agency up to 48 hours to publicly disclose the name of an officer involved in a deadly force incident.
The circumstances that eventually culminated in the 1 p.m. showdown began about five hours earlier with a car crash on Treeline Drive, near Charleston and Hollywood boulevards, police said.
Police said the vehicle - which belonged to the female victim - was quickly abandoned and someone called to report the woman had been kidnapped.
Police said they quickly honed in on the woman’s ex-boyfriend, against whom she had sought and received a protective order last month.
During the course of their investigation, officers received information that the former boyfriend had a “violent past,” Jones said, and had made threats.
“There were comments made from him ... that he was going to kill himself and her,” Jones said.
Further information about the shooting was unavailable Monday evening.
December 7, 2005