Police say man admits accidentally killing friend

When her daughter didn't come home on Monday night, Debra Carasik tried not to worry.

Maybe she's out with friends, the single mother thought. After all, the 18-year-old wasn't in high school anymore.

But by Tuesday afternoon, Carasik couldn't hold back. She began checking phone records and calling her daughter's friends. She even tried to file a missing persons report but was told to hold off one more day.

"They (police) said, 'The report will just sit on a desk if there's no reason to suspect foul play,' " Carasik recalled being told.

But what happened to Breana Lynn Carasik-McGee was one of the foulest things her mother could imagine.

Her daughter was shot in the head - perhaps accidentally - by someone she thought was a friend. And instead of taking her to the hospital, the friend dumped her body in the desert. She was still alive, so he shot her again, according to details in the arrest report for the accused killer, Ricardo Perez.

Perez, 19, went to the Clark County Detention Center on Tuesday and turned himself in because "it was the right thing to do," according to the report, which was released Wednesday.

He told police he and Breana had been drinking at a friend's apartment early Monday morning when he began playing with his mother's Ruger 9 mm handgun, which he'd found on Sunday.

As Perez and Breana were leaving the apartment, Perez said he accidentally pulled the trigger and shot the girl in the back of the head, the report said.

Homicide Lt. Ray Steiber said detectives are still investigating Perez's statements.

"We're still real early in the investigation in determining whether it was in fact an accident or intentional," Steiber said.

In a panic, Perez said he carried the girl's body to his Nissan Pathfinder and drove to the south end of College Drive in Henderson, where he continued driving into the desert near U.S. Highway 95, the report said.

Perez told police he pulled the girl from the vehicle and she was still alive, making "grunting noises." Perez said he fired another round into her head because he "couldn't take it anymore," the report said.

When detectives asked why Perez didn't take her to a hospital, he said he "thought she would die anyway," the report said.

"I don't think he had his head screwed on the right way," Carasik said Wednesday afternoon. "He could have taken my daughter to a hospital. She was still alive."

Detectives later found the girl's body near the edge of a gravel and dirt road, down a 20-foot embankment into a ravine.

After the killing, Perez drove to his apartment near Boulder Highway and Russell Road, threw the gun into a trash bin, tossed away his bloody clothes and deleted the dead girl's number from his phone, the report said.

He wasn't able to clean the Pathfinder because there was too much blood, the report said.

The friend who lived at the apartment complex where the shooting took place told police he had been drinking with Perez and smoking marijuana before the shooting. He went to bed before the shooting and didn't know what happened. When he awoke the next morning, a maintenance man said there was blood in the parking spot where the Pathfinder had been parked.

Perez told detectives he had between 25 and 30 beers the night of the shooting.

He was accompanied to the jail to turn himself in Tuesday by his mother, his former stepsister and his girlfriend. Police said Perez hadn't told his family about the second shot, the one he admitted intentionally firing into Breana's head while she lay dying in the desert.

He was booked on charges of murder with a deadly weapon and battery with a deadly weapon, as well as a number of unrelated traffic warrants.

Carasik said she's been in shock since Tuesday night, when detectives knocked on her door and told her the news.

She learned all the gruesome details by watching television news reports Wednesday afternoon and hasn't spoken to detectives.

"I just have a lot of questions that are unanswered," she said.

Carasik said she didn't think Perez knew her daughter very well and doubted they were close friends. A friend wouldn't do what Perez did, she said.

Her daughter was a recent graduate of Legacy High School and had been taking classes at Kaplan College, which has a campus on Sahara Avenue, near Valley View Boulevard.

Carasik said she didn't think Breana's father had been notified about the death. He lives in California and hasn't been answering his phone, she said.

Breana has a half-brother from her father's previous relationship, but Breana was Carasik's only child.

"She was just a motivated girl who was full of life," Carasik said. "It just hasn't set in for me yet. I'm in complete shock."

Contact reporter Mike Blasky at mblasky@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0283.