WEEK IN REVIEW:
Three shot to death at neighborhood party
Adolph Robles talks last week about his wife, Tina, who was shot and killed by gunmen who fired on a crowd at the Berkley Square block party on May 28. It was the couples' interest in low-riders that led them to the annual gathering. Photo by Clint Karlsen.
Crazy Horse Too owner Rick Rizzolo, right, leaves the Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse in downtown Las Vegas after he pleaded guilty to a felony charge. Rizzolo must sell the topless club as part of his deal. At far right is "Buffalo" Jim Barrier, a longtime critic of Rizzolo who operates a neighboring business. "I was just here to see justice served on somebody who wreaked havoc on my neighborhood for many years," Barrier said. Photo by K.M. Cannon.
A shootout at an annual Las Vegas block party on May 28 left two men and a woman dead and four others wounded.
Five or six gunmen hid behind an inflatable bounce house filled with children at the seventh annual Berkley Square block party and unleashed a barrage of bullets into an unsuspecting crowd of hundreds, witnesses recalled on Tuesday.
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Tina Robles, 41; Germar Samuel and Steven "Goldie" Beck, both 24 years old, were killed on the sidewalk and street in front of Anthony Mason's home at 513 Frederick Ave., south of Lake Mead Boulevard and west of Interstate 15.
The gunmen were teenagers angered because they had been asked to leave the family event, Mason said. Police said they were gang members.
"I had asked them to leave because they were causing trouble," Mason said. "I told them this was a family party, not a gang-banging thing. I told them to take it somewhere else."
Some heard them say they would come back, Mason's wife, Sheila Mason, recalled. "Nobody saw it (the shootings) coming."
Anthony Mason had invited Beck to the party to learn more about low-rider cars. Beck died on the sidewalk, blood pouring from his head, Anthony Mason said.
"I was standing over Goldie," he said. "I kept wiping the blood off his face. He couldn't breath, so I turned him over on his side, and he started spitting up blood."
Beck soon stopped coughing. "His eyes were open. He was just staring at me," Anthony Mason said, shaking his head as he stared at three memorials honoring the victims at a Tuesday vigil. "I'm all out of words."
Robles' husband, Adolph, said last week that it was their common passion for low-rider cars that led them to the block party.
Tina was hanging onto his tattooed arm, and their son Anthony was standing in front of them. The shots were fired and Adolph grabbed the couple's son and dove behind an El Camino.
"I yelled to her, 'Get down,' and out of the corner of my eye I saw her fall to the ground," Adolph said.
But it's the memory of Tina hanging on his arm that Adolph chooses to focus on now.
"She used to complain I wouldn't show my feelings by holding her hand in public," Adolph said. "I just wasn't raised like that. It's hard for me to show my feelings. But I want everyone to know that I love my wife. I know it's the wrong time, but she is still here in spirit."
MONDAY
Reid won't take any more free seats
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid accepted free ringside seats from the Nevada Athletic Commission to three professional boxing matches between 2003 and 2005, while the agency was trying to influence him on federal regulation of boxing, The Associated Press reported.
Though he insisted he did nothing wrong in attending the bouts, Reid said later in the week that he will no longer accept free seats to boxing matches "to avoid even the faintest appearance of impropriety."
"He wants to err on the side of caution," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said. "In light of questions that have been raised about the practice, Senator Reid will not accept these kinds of credentials in the future."
TUESDAY
Slowdown leads to housing layoffs
A housing slowdown in the Las Vegas Valley has led home builders, mortgage and title companies and other real estate-related companies to lay off employees.
Southern Nevada Home Builders Association spokeswoman Monica Caruso said several home builders, probably fewer than half a dozen, had adjusted their staffs.
"Some of the sales numbers are down, traffic is down and so they do not need to be staffed at the level that they were for the boom cycle that we are apparently coming off of," she said.
Don DelGiorno, president of KB Home's Nevada division, said the company has reduced its local staff by about 10 percent.
WEDNESDAY
History suggests charges unlikely
It will probably be weeks before federal authorities decide whether to pursue charges against the parents of two young girls who drowned in separate incidents last month at Lake Mead National Recreation Area after they were allowed to float in choppy waters without life jackets.
But if history is any indication, the parents of 4-year-old Nicole Benitize and 7-year-old Jacqueline Ayon won't face child endangerment, neglect or other charges in the deaths.
"We have not charged any parents for negligence down at the lake," Natalie Collins, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Nevada, said Wednesday.
But, she said, "we definitely look at these kinds of incidents seriously."
THURSDAY
Rizzolo pleads guilty to felony
Rick Rizzolo, the 47-year-old owner of the Crazy Horse Too Gentlemen's Club, pleaded guilty to a felony tax charge as part of a deal that will end his career in the strip club industry.
Rizzolo, who has operated the Crazy Horse for more than 20 years, must sell the club as part of his plea agreement, which precludes him from operating any sexually oriented businesses in the United States "for the duration of his natural life."
The plea will cost Rizzolo nearly $17 million and could send him to prison for up to 16 months, but it ends a federal investigation of him since at least 1995 when authorities began using wiretaps to gather information about him.
FRIDAY
Firm finds fault with school pay
A consulting firm hired by the state said that Nevada school employees should have received raises of at least 7.8 percent last year just to keep up with inflation, a conclusion rejected by two Republican lawmakers.
An analysis by the Denver firm of Augenblick, Palaich and Associates concluded that the cost of living in Nevada increased by 7.8 percent, more than twice the national 3.4 percent Consumer Price Index rate. John Augenblick, head of the Denver education consulting firm, said that the state in future years should make up for inadequate pay hikes.
School personnel in Nevada received a 2 percent cost-of-living raise last year and will get a 4 percent raise July 1.
