FBI agent, suspect both shot in northeast valley
Daniel Ramirez heard gunshots outside a northeast valley home Tuesday afternoon and then saw a frantic man jump a fence into the backyard.
Ramirez watched the man hop onto a neighbor’s roof.
Gunfire followed. The man was hit.
At the time, Ramirez, at a house on Alpaca Circle, didn’t know he had witnessed the culmination of a shootout between an FBI agent and a fugitive, both of whom were wounded, FBI officials said.
Residents near Charleston and Nellis boulevards described chaos and the surreal scene of the wounded man being pulled off a house roof by paramedics.
“There were undercover vehicles everywhere,” resident Robert Robbins said. “It was pandemonium.”
The agent, who was not identified, suffered injuries that were not life-threatening. He was treated at University Medical Center, FBI spokesman Patrick Turner said. The agent was wearing a protective vest, he said.
The federal agent was working with the Criminal Apprehension Team, a task force composed of personnel from the Metropolitan Police Department, Henderson police and the FBI.
Las Vegas police spokeswoman Laura Meltzer said the suspect, who wasn’t identified, was seriously injured. He was treated at UMC and was in surgery about 4 p.m., Turner said.
His condition was unavailable Tuesday night.
FBI spokeswoman Bridget Pappas said the task force was executing an arrest warrant about 3 p.m. She did not say what the warrant was for.
The ensuing foot pursuit ended in a shooting. It began on Pleasant Brook Street and ended about a mile southeast on Alpaca, near Charleston Boulevard and Christy Lane.
Robbins, who lives nearby, said he was in his home when he heard two or three shots outside and saw someone he believed to be an officer running with an assault rifle. He saw a couple of people shot, including a person on a roof, but he couldn’t tell who was law enforcement and who the suspect was.
An FBI agent fired a weapon on duty last year during an encounter with a fugitive.
On Aug. 2, a federal agent, also with the CAT task force, fatally shot a man.
The suspect was shot at the Arizona Charlie’s on Boulder Highway.
The man, identified as Joshua Durchell in court records but who also was called Joshua Burchell by the Clark County coroner’s office and Jerome Burchell by the FBI, was shot while authorities were trying to arrest him for a robbery that occurred May 31, 2011, at a local fast food store.
Durchell also was a suspect in the investigation of a slaying that occurred July 22.
The FBI said Durchell, 35, ignored an agent’s repeated commands and brandished a weapon before he was shot and fatally wounded.
Police had considered Durchell a suspect in the July 22 slaying of 38-year-old Esteban Meza Jr.
Meza’s body was discovered the Shelter Cove apartment complex at 2683 Decatur Blvd., near Sahara Avenue. A person who went to pick Meza up for church found him dead in his apartment, police said.
The warrant FBI agents were serving on Durchell came from the 2011 robbery of a Las Vegas Quiznos.
By Oct. 1, the CAT task force had made 618 arrests, or three-quarters of the task force’s arrests for 2012. Of those arrests, 145 suspects were from outside Clark County.
Review-Journal writers Jeff German and Mike Blasky and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact reporter Antonio Planas at aplanas@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4638.
