More details emerge about 2 Las Vegas police shootings

The Metropolitan Police Department provided more details Friday about a pair of police shootings that happened Tuesday.

During a news conference Friday, Metro Assistant Sheriff Dori Koren said Justin Walsh, a 44-year-old Las Vegas resident, died after being shot by 28-year-old Tristen Taylor, an officer with the department since 2024.

Officers responded after a woman sent a text message saying she was being threatened by a man with a gun Tuesday morning at around 7:30 a.m. Officers traced the message to an apartment building in the southwest valley in the 9200 block of West Russell Road, Koren said.

After arriving to a unit at the Gramercy Apartments complex where they believed the text message, with a later call, came from, Koren said officers, four in all, heard two people arguing on the other side of the door.

It was then, Koren said, that the apartment door opened and woman tried to crawl out, toward the officers.

Koren said a man, later identified as Walsh, then tried to pull the woman back into the apartment with one hand while pointing a handgun at the woman’s head with his other hand.

Walsh, Koren, ignored commands from the officers and began to raise his firearm in the direction of the officers.

“Officer Taylor quickly took action to address the threat and fired four rounds, striking Walsh,” Koren said. “All of this happened in a matter of split seconds in a close, confined area.”

Footage showed raised gun

Footage that Metro said was from Taylor’s body camera showed him telling Walsh to put his hands up. The video showed Walsh, while taking a shooting stance, raising what appeared to be a handgun with both hands.

Shortly after, Taylor fired several shots. Walsh was then taken to a local hospital, Koren said, where he later died.

If he had survived, Koren said, Walsh would have been charged with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon on a protected person, with one count each of resisting a police officer with a firearm, kidnapping with a deadly weapon, assault with a deadly weapon, and domestic battery by strangulation.

Taylor, who works for Metro’s Summerlin Area Command, was placed on routine paid administrative leave pending the outcome of a review of the shooting, Metro said in a news release.

“This incident is a stark reminder of the dangers that our men and women in law enforcement fact every single day,” Koren said. “It’s also an important reminder of the courage, professionalism and decisiveness demonstrate in a moment where seconds matter and where lives are on the line.”

Second shooting

Also on Tuesday, a constable shot a man who had used an 18-inch machete to slash a maintenance worker’s neck at an apartment complex in the east valley, according to Metro.

Assistant Sheriff Bryan Peterson said Victor Vondrasek, 46, was shot and later arrested. While Peterson didn’t identify the maintenance worker by name Friday, a Metro arrest report identified him as Orlando Sosa.

Peterson said that as of Friday the maintenance worker remained hospitalized and in critical condition.

Sosa had helped deputy constable Mark Ruesch, 63, after Ruesch tried to serve an eviction notice Tuesday at the apartment building in the 6600 block of South Sandhill Road, near East Sunset Road, police said.

Peterson said Ruesch went to the apartment to start the eviction process on Monday and returned Tuesday to find the apartment’s door barricaded. Sosa tried to enter the second-floor apartment from the patio side after climbing up a ladder, police said.

But once the maintenance man entered the balcony area, Peterson said Vondrasek “crashed through” the glass patio door and cut his neck with the machete.

“Sgt. Ruesch heard the screams from the balcony and quickly climbed the ladder to the second floor,” Peterson said. “As he reached the top of the ladder, Vondrasek attempted to stab Sgt. Ruesch with the machete.”

Instead, Peterson said, the machete became stuck in Ruesch’s shirt. Vondrasek, Peterson said, then kicked Ruesch in the head and struck him in the face with a bag of landscaping rocks before the constable fired one shot at Vondrasek from a .40-caliber pistol, striking him in the face.

Vondrasek was arrested and taken to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center.

Vondrasek was later booked into the Clark County Detention Center on suspicion of attempted murder, resisting a public officer, battery, and other charges, according to jail records.

As of Friday afternoon, an online jail roster showed Vondrasek as an inmate at the facility.

Ruesch has been employed by the Office of the Ex-Officio constable for Las Vegas township since 2017. The office is technically part of Metro’s Detention Services Division.

Metro, during Friday’s news conference, displayed body camera video from an officer at the scene, which showed Ruesch walking down a set of stairs at the apartment complex with the machete still attached to his clothing.

“He stabbed me,” Ruesch can be heard saying. “I’m not sure if it went in.”

Peterson said Ruesch, a Metro employee from 1992 until 2015 before starting his work as a constable, suffered a broken nose and some minor cuts to his head and torso area.

Vondrasek has a court hearing scheduled for Monday morning, according to online records.

Staff reporter Akiya Dillon contributed to this report. Contact Bryan Horwath at bhorwath@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BryanHorwath on X.