Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Slain man's father urged him to quit job

Apartment complex security guard was shot in back Jan. 20

Wayne Wilcox told his son to get out.

The security guard job in West Las Vegas was too dangerous, the father warned during the holiday season, especially without a bullet-proof vest.

"I said, 'You're going to get killed out there,' " Wilcox said. "I was trying to get him out of there, but I couldn't do it."

Three weeks later, Brian Wilcox, 29, was shot dead.

On Friday, Las Vegas police booked Markette Kajuan Tillman, 22, on a charge of murder with a weapon in the Jan. 20 slaying.

Police could not immediately provide more details of the arrest.

Brian Wilcox was working for Guardian Security at a Las Vegas Housing Authority apartment complex near H Street and Owens Avenue when he was shot through the heart.

Police said Wilcox and another security guard confronted a group of men trespassing on the property about 11:30 p.m. When the group grew hostile, the guards decided to wait for backup and turned away on their bicycles.

As the guards rode away, Brian Wilcox was shot in the back. He died at University Medical Center.

At the time of the shooting, Tillman was awaiting sentencing for open or gross lewdness, a gross misdemeanor. He was scheduled to be sentenced March 3.

Police arrested Tillman the day after the shooting on unrelated charges of kidnapping, attempted murder and shooting from a vehicle at a crowd. He has been jailed at the Clark County Detention Center since then.

Wayne Wilcox said he hopes prosecutors pursue the death penalty.

"I hope they burn him," he said. "If they can't find somebody to pull the switch, I'll come out there and do it for nothing."

Before moving to Las Vegas from Minnesota in 2002, Brian Wilcox was a popular disc jockey known on the Minneapolis-St. Paul club scene as Wil-E-Wil.

"I think it would be agreed upon by everyone who knew him that he was a great person!" JJ wrote on a Web site tribute to Brian Wilcox. "Bad things always happen to people who don't deserve it."

Brian Wilcox moved to Southern Nevada to escape Minnesota's cold weather and to break into the Las Vegas DJ scene, his father said.

But he soon racked up extensive credit card bills trying to get settled in a new city, and he had trouble finding work. The $8-an-hour security guard job was all he could find, his father said.

Wayne Wilcox warned his son that the job was too dangerous, and he tried to convince him to return to Minnesota.

Brian Wilcox is home now. His ashes sit in an urn at his father's Minneapolis house.

"I've got him home," Wayne Wilcox said. "Nobody can hurt him now.