Mother of slain Las Vegas inmate says death could have been prevented

The mother of the man killed Saturday while in custody at the Clark County Detention Center is outraged.

“Where were the guards? Where was the staff? How can this happen?” asked Patricia Fitzpatrick this week.

Her son, Jeremy Bowling, 25, was fatally beaten and strangled while locked in his cell Saturday with Franklin Sharp, 33, whom police have named as a suspect.

The slaying happened sometime before 5:30 p.m. Saturday. That’s when a guard doing a routine walk-through stopped at the pair’s cell because he could only see Sharp through the door’s small window.

When the guard opened the cell, he found Bowling at the foot of the door, lying in a pool of his own blood. Bowling was taken to University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

“He only came to Vegas because he said he wanted a change,” Fitzpatrick said from her home in Shelbyville, Kentucky, where Bowling was living before his recent move. “I begged him not to go down there.”

Fitzpatrick said Bowling struggled in his first few days in Las Vegas. He was initially living in a shelter as he tried to track down a job. Just a few days after coming to town, she said, he was jumped and robbed.

All of his money was taken, along with a cellphone, and the incident landed Bowling in the hospital with minor injuries.

“He called me and said, ‘I just want to come home to my family and friends. Can you come get me?’” his mother said. “And I said, ‘No, son, but I can get you a bus ticket, and you can come back home on a bus.’”

Fitzpatrick, who said she couldn’t afford the trip to Las Vegas, purchased her son a bus ticket, but her son never boarded. He told her the robbery happened near the bus station and said he was scared to return to the area.

Bowling was arrested Aug. 6 in connection with a car theft. A man near West Flamingo Road and the 215 Beltway had left his car unlocked with the keys in the ignition while he went inside a store. When he returned, a man was in his car, pulling out of the parking lot.

The car later was recovered in the far northwest valley. Bowling was found about 5 miles away and booked at the jail later that night.

He pleaded guilty Aug. 26 to attempted grand larceny and was awaiting sentencing.

Fitzpatrick didn’t excuse the car theft, but theorized Bowling did it because he was trying to leave Las Vegas.

“And then he got caught and put in Nevada jail. And he had been doing good till they put this guy in there,” she said of Sharp. “There was no reason or no cause for someone to murder my son. He did not deserve this. This could have been prevented.”

Fitzpatrick said her son was outgoing with “loads of friends” and “a good heart.”

A few days before Bowling was killed, he wrote his mother a letter. In it, he said he had “gotten close to Jesus” and was “doing fine.” She called to check on him Friday.

“Justice is going to be done one way or the other,” she said. “I was looking forward to him coming home. I wasn’t looking forward to getting a call saying that my child was deceased.”

Sharp, the suspect in Bowling’s death, is now in maximum security custody, a jail official said. He had been charged a month earlier with battery by prisoner and battery by strangulation after he was accused of trying to strangle another inmate.

He is due in court Nov. 16 for a preliminary hearing.

Contact Rachel Crosby at rcrosby@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Follow @rachelacrosby on Twitter.