Judge orders man charged in triple homicide held without bail

A man suspected of killing three people at a southwest valley apartment complex briefly appeared before a judge Wednesday morning.

Spencer McDonald, 30, faces three counts of open murder and one count of attempted murder, court records show.

Police said that two people were killed inside an apartment at the Rancho De Montana complex, 9105 W. Flamingo Road, while a maintenance worker who responded to a welfare check at the apartment also was slain. Another maintenance worker was attacked, police said, and is expected to survive.

McDonald was arrested late Tuesday morning while carrying a “large mace or sledgehammer-type instrument,” police said.

During an initial appearance Wednesday, Justice of the Peace Rebecca Saxe ordered McDonald to be held without bail, although attorneys will have the chance to argue for him to be granted bail in the future. McDonald didn’t speak while he appeared in court wearing a dark blue Clark County Detention Center uniform.

“The court did find probable cause for your arrest in this case,” Saxe said.

Saxe said McDonald will be appointed an attorney before another judge can address his custody status. He was ordered to appear in court again on Monday.

Events unfolded Tuesday morning when officers were called to a report of a man bleeding from the head who said he was attacked at the complex on West Flamingo near South El Capitan Way, a Metropolitan Police Department statement said.

At a news briefing outside the complex, Metro homicide Lt. Jason Johansson told reporters that a man in his 30s — later identified to the public as McDonald — had been arrested after the three people were found slain inside an apartment, including a man in his 50s and a woman in her 80s.

Police from Summerlin Area Command were called about a possible stabbing of a person near the complex’s leasing office, Johansson said.

“As officers arrived on scene, they made contact with a 50-year-old Hispanic male who was a maintenance worker who appeared to be a victim,” Johansson said. “That person told (officers) that (the) man who stabbed him was located in the courtyard directly behind the leasing office.”

Police soon learned that “the suspect ran through the leasing office and out toward Flamingo Road,” he said. “Officers who were responding made contact with him and he was taken into custody.”

Officers reached the apartment “where unfortunately they located the deceased remains of a female and two males” who appeared to have been murdered, and the department’s homicide unit was contacted, he said.

The worker who survived was attacked at the door and able to flee to the leasing office, but the first worker died in the apartment, he said.

The bodies of the female and the other male killed there were in one of the unit’s bedrooms, he said.

While police were unsure about the victims’ relationship to the suspect, they do believe that they were related and that they possibly lived together in the apartment, Johansson said Tuesday.

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.