Neighbor tried to intervene seconds before central valley couple’s apparent murder-suicide

Before a central valley couple died in an apparent murder-suicide early Tuesday, the terrified woman’s screams awakened neighbor David Wheatcraft.

“He cut my neck!” he heard her shriek. “He cut my neck!”

Wheatcraft, 50, had fallen asleep Monday night with his mobile home’s front door cracked open; the weather was nice, he said. But he was jolted awake about 2:30 a.m. Tuesday to the woman — who lived across the street — yelling.

Seconds later, she was rattling Wheatcraft’s dead-bolted, front porch door, pleading for him to let her in.

Groggy, Wheatcraft saw her, and he saw the blood, but his grated porch door was locked from the inside. As he quickly grabbed the key, Wheatcraft’s other neighbor, the woman’s estranged husband, walked out of the couple’s 1190 S. Mojave Road trailer, pointing a shotgun.

As Wheatcraft processed the sight, his 25-year-old son walked up behind Wheatcraft, asking what was wrong.

“I grabbed my son and hit the deck,” Wheatcraft said.

From the ground, he heard his neighbor fire the shotgun at his wife, who was still standing on Wheatcraft’s porch steps.

“In all honesty, I heard the one shot,” Wheatcraft said, then a weak moan from the woman. “Then I heard him cock the gun again.”

Wheatcraft stayed down and called 911 with his cellphone, still holding his son. As officers responded about 2:45 a.m. to the back corner of the tiny community, the woman was already dead in front of Wheatcraft’s home and her husband had retreated into their trailer.

Because he was armed, his retreat led to an hourslong standoff in the La Villa Vegas Mobile Home Park, where neighbors were evacuated into the dark, cool morning air.

About 6:30 a.m., after the man hadn’t responded to police commands or SWAT negotiators, officers went inside the trailer. That’s when they found him dead, in the mobile home’s back bedroom, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

“Lots of blood,” said property manager Roy Reed, who was working to clean it up Tuesday afternoon.

Standing in front of a trash bag filled with cut-out carpet, seeping in red, Reed said the couple was married but separated; the man had lived there for nearly three years, and the woman came and went.

Reed said the couple never caused trouble, save for complaining about the grass being too long outside their home. “Normal stuff,” he said.

He said the couple often argued, as he’d gotten a few informal noise complaints from neighbors, but their issues were private. Reed added the man drank a lot, which the man admitted to and the woman vented about sometimes, but Reed said they were both nice to him.

Wheatcraft shared Reed’s sentiments.

“He’s a drinker, but he was a lot more sociable than her,” Wheatcraft said. “When she left, he was out talking to people, and when she came back, he stayed inside with her. She had been back about two weeks.”

He paused, adding, “I couldn’t picture him killing his wife, or even committing suicide.”

Lt. Dan McGrath, who oversees the Metropolitan Police Department’s homicide unit, did not identify the couple but said the man had a criminal record with at least one incident of domestic violence involving the woman.

The Clark County coroner’s office will name the couple once their families have been notified.

Wheatcraft sat inside his home Tuesday afternoon, long after police had left. A few pellet holes marked the thin wall above his porch steps.

“It hurts my heart,” he said, wishing he’d been able to help the woman. He later learned she’d knocked on a few other neighbors’ doors before his, but he was the only one who heard her.

“That makes me feel a little better,” he said, like he wasn’t the only one who could’ve intervened.

But even if he had, the shooting happened so fast.

“Where that bullet hole was,” he said, pointing to the spot where the woman was shot, “we were directly behind it.”

Between his son and the wall was a solid oak desk, which absorbed the pellet after it went through the woman.

“If that desk hadn’t been there, that bullet could’ve hit one of us,” he said, falling silent.

Instead, the empty shell clunked to the floor, where detectives later picked it up and bagged it for evidence.

The woman’s death was the 45th homicide Metro has investigated this year, and it was the year’s second apparent murder-suicide in the same jurisdiction. The last one was March 7, also involving a couple.

Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Lawren Linehan contributed to this report. Contact Rachel Crosby at rcrosby@reviewjournal.com or at 702-387-5290. Find her on Twitter: @rachelacrosby