Las Vegas police release bodycam footage from deadly 12-vehicle crash
Las Vegas police on Friday released body camera footage from a 12-vehicle crash that left three dead.
The videos — about an hour of footage posted to the Metropolitan Police Department’s Public Records Unit YouTube channel — were released hours after the Las Vegas Review-Journal published a column disputing the department’s earlier refusals to share the recordings.
In one video, medics and Metro officers discussed whether Jose Gutierrez, 19, who had to be pulled out of the Infiniti he was driving and suffered “minor lacerations,” was the driver who caused the Nov. 18 collision.
“I would safely say (he) is probably the cause,” one officer said, standing in the middle of the carnage strewn throughout the road on West Cheyenne Avenue near North Jones Boulevard.
“He was in the back, huh?” another asked.
Gutierrez has been charged with two counts of open murder, as well as counts of attempted murder, reckless driving, and battery with a deadly weapon resulting in substantial bodily harm in connection with the crash, according to court records.
Gutierrez’s pregnant girlfriend, Adilene Duran Rincon, 20, and a driver from another vehicle, Edward Garcia, 38, died at the scene, according to Gutierrez’s arrest report.
Two others, Jose Pena-Dominguez and his passenger, Vanessa Lainez Vasquez, had been critically injured in the collision, police previously said.
Prosecutors said that Lainez Vasquez, who had been in a medically induced coma, died on Thursday. It is unclear whether Gutierrez will face a third murder charge.
In the second body camera video, an officer described the conditions of the victims to a firefighter.
“We’ve got one in here. He looks like he’s unconscious,” the officer said, while pointing at a wrecked vehicle. “We have one with a tarp over her. She looks beyond help — I’m not going to lie.”
“This one is awake, coming in and out, and we have another trapped inside a vehicle,” the officer added.
Contact Akiya Dillon at adillon@reviewjournal.com.
