Father dead, stepson arrested in south valley shooting
A volatile relationship between a father and his short-fused stepson exploded into violence Wednesday that ended with the father shot dead in a residential street.
Tyten Kaehu-Scanlan, 19, was booked into jail on a murder with a deadly weapon charge after Las Vegas police said he shot and killed his stepdad after an argument Wednesday morning in the south valley.
His sister told the Review-Journal that the two men's testy relationship had been building to that deadly end.
"It was just built-up animosity over the years with so much shit between them," Nani Kaehu-Scanlan said.
Authorities have not released the dead man's name, but she identified her stepfather as Blackie Pele.
Nani Kaehu-Scanlan, 18, said Pele goaded her brother into the fight, which was typical of their relationship.
"Blackie provoked the situation to happen," she said. "My brother approached him, and he came at my brother disrespectfully. My brother has been put down his whole life by this man. All he wanted from this man was an apology, and again this very day he put my brother down. I guess my brother got fed up with it."
Las Vegas police Homicide Lt. Ray Steiber said police were still investigating the circumstances of the case but acknowledged the past violence in the family.
"It escalated into what occurred today: ultimately a death," Steiber said.
Police said Tyten Kaehu-Scanlan shot and killed Pele about 9 a.m. two blocks from the family's home on Begonia Valley Avenue, near Windmill Parkway and Eastern Avenue.
Pele was found on the sidewalk by neighbors. He died at the scene.
Witnesses told the Review-Journal that Pele was walking south on La Serna Street about 8:45 a.m. with three or four children between the ages of 3 to 11.
Neighbors heard shouts and running before they heard screams and three gunshots.
"It was poof, poof and then poof," one neighbor said.
A woman, the mother of the suspect, arrived on the scene shortly after the shooting and yelled for help.
The mother and children also walked back to the home, visibly stunned and weeping, witnesses said.
"My son killed his stepdad," the woman exclaimed to officers.
Tyten Kaehu-Scanlan was arrested a short time later at the family's home, surrendering to police without incident, Capt. Tom Roberts said.
Neighbor Melanie Debello said she was shaken by the incident, a rarity for the generally quiet neighborhood that borders Las Vegas and Henderson.
"I want to know how a man ends up dead on the sidewalk," she said.
Nani Kaehu-Scanlan disputed some of the witnesses' accounts. She said her brother didn't shoot Pele in front of the children or her mother.
"He would never do that," she said.
Pele had eight children with Tyten and Nani's mother.
Nani Kaehu-Scanlan said she and Tyten were the oldest siblings and had a different father, which was a chief reason why Pele and Tyten Kaehu-Scanlan clashed.
"He never liked me or my older brother," Nani Kaehu-Scanlan said.
On Oct. 26, Tyten Kaehu-Scanlan was arrested and accused of domestic battery against Pele, according to court records.
Although Nani Kaehu-Scanlan said Pele routinely abused her mother and her siblings, Pele did not appear to have any criminal history backing her claims.
The charges against Tyten Kaehu-Scanlan were later dropped, and Pele was kicked out of the house.
"Mom didn't want Blackie to do what he did to my brother any more, so she cut his line," Nani Kaehu-Scanlan said. "She said he could come see the kids. That was her concern, to keep him away from my older brother, but she wanted him to see his kids."
Pele would wait on the street corner almost every morning to walk his children to school, she said.
It's unclear what started the argument because the records have been sealed, according to the Clark County district attorney's office, but that wasn't the only violent case in Tyten Kaehu-Scanlan's past.
The teenager had been a fugitive since January after being accused of assaulting neighbor Joseph Ysebaert in 2011.
He was charged with felony battery with substantial harm and skipped his December court appearance, records show.
Ysebaert's roommate, who asked that he only be identified by his first name, Francisco, said the teenager was a menace and a constant source of agitation for neighbors. He said Ysebaert's jaw was broken during the assault.
"He was crazy, and no one was doing anything about it," he said.
Francisco said his household called the police more than 10 times to report Tyten Kaehu-Scanlan for fighting and domestic violence in the last year, he said.
He said Tyten Kaehu-Scanlan was rarely seen at his home after the arrest warrant was issued. He hadn't seen the teenager for two months until Wednesday morning's bloody scene.
"He went MIA for a couple months," Francisco said.
David Roddy, a spokesman for the Clark County School District, said district records indicate Tyten Kaehu-Scanlan was last enrolled in the school system in March 2010, when he was a 10th-grader at Chaparral High School.
Tyten Kaehu-Scanlan also attended Las Vegas High School and Basic High School, according to records.
Nani Kaehu-Scanlan said she doesn't condone her brother's action, but she hopes others realize there are two sides to the story.
"In my heart, I know it's wrong what he did, but it happened," she said.
Contact Mike Blasky at mblasky@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0283. Reporters Maggie Lillis, Ben Frederickson and Antonio Planas contributed to this report.
