Suspect arrested in two attacks at southwest condo complex
A man accused of robbing one woman and physically and sexually attacking another after breaking into two southwest valley condominiums in July has been arrested, Las Vegas police said.
Joe Lamrenje, 30, faces recommended charges of attempted sexual assault with a deadly weapon, battery with a deadly weapon, burglary with a deadly weapon and sexually motivated coercion with force.
Police responded at 3:28 a.m. Tuesday to a condominium in the Copper Sands complex, on Flamingo Road near Cimarron Road, after a woman reported being attacked. The 25-year-old told police she had been sleeping in the same room as her 2-year-old son when someone began kissing her lips. She awoke to find a stranger, not her husband as she first thought, on top of her holding a pair of scissors and an object later determined to be a kitchen grinder.
"If you don't fight, you won't get hurt," the man told her, according to police. "Just do what I say."
As the man began to try to sexually assault the woman within eyesight of her son, she fought back. She kicked and knocked him to the floor. Before running away, the man hit the woman repeatedly in the head with the kitchen grinder, an injury that required six stitches.
While investigating, police learned of another woman in the same complex who recently had been robbed. She told police a man had crawled through her boyfriend's bedroom window while she was sleeping alone on July 19. When dogs in the condominium started barking, the man took her purse - which held credit cards and other information, including her cellphone number - and ran, leaving a pair of scissors at the scene. The woman later received multiple phone calls from a number she did not recognize. She used an Internet service to trace the phone to Lamrenje - a man who police later found matched the physical descriptions given by both women.
In his arrest report, Lamrenje confirmed he entered the condominiums, stole one woman's purse and hit the other with a kitchen grinder after she stopped him from sexually assaulting her. He also told police he had a fantasy about what it would be like to rape someone, the report said.
A representative of the police department said Lamrenje was arrested for gross and open lewdness in 2004 and has used multiple names with police since 2004, including Joe Wamrenje and Johnny Lamrenje.
Contact Ben Frederickson at bfrederickson@review
journal.com or 702-224-5512.
