Neighbor recalls scene after Las Vegas murder-suicide

The screams started about 7 p.m. Alex Strmiska’s bloodied neighbor stood in the doorway of her home.

”Help!” Cierra Cabrera screamed. There were gashes on her face. Her hands were bound. Her 4-year-old son Nova lay in her arms. Strmiska rushed to pick up the boy.

“You’re gonna be OK, you’re gonna be OK,” he repeated to himself outside the home on Norton Peak Avenue. But the boy appeared lifeless; his chest punctured by multiple stab wounds.

A voice shouted, “We got to get him to the hospital!” Cabrera got in the passenger seat of her maroon Toyota. Strmiska handed over her son’s body.

“He’s dying,” Cabrera screamed, before her mother sat in the driver’s seat and the car sped away from the home where authorities say Tyler Knaub stabbed his son to death and killed himself Wednesday.

The child was identified Thursday by the Clark County coroner’s office as Nova Knaub. The man’s identity has not been released by the coroner’s office, but court records identify the boy’s father as Tyler Knaub. He was found dead in a bathroom in the house with apparent self-inflicted stab wounds, Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Dan McGrath said.

Court records identified the mother as 35-year-old Cierra Cabrera.

The family declined to be interviewed Thursday.

“I was just trying to do what I could,” Strmiska told the Las Vegas Review-Journal Thursday, recalling the tragedy from the night before while his 5-year-old son played nearby.

As a parent, he said he had no choice but to aid the mother screaming for help for her child.

“I honestly didn’t do nothing,” Strmiska said. “That little boy passed away.”

Longstanding custody battle

Knaub’s fight for custody of Nova ended 15 days before he killed him, court records show.

Police said Knaub, 30, forced his way into his estranged girlfriend’s house on the 8700 block of Norton Peak Avenue Wednesday night, tied Nova and Cabrera with zip ties and repeatedly stabbed them.

Nova’s grandmother was in the home at the time, called 911 and somehow got her grandson and his mother out of the house, police said.

Nova died at Southern Hills Hospital.

Cabrera suffered stab wounds to her head and neck. She is expected to survive, police said.

McGrath said there was one previous domestic violence call at the home in 2015. Knaub was arrested for battery and domestic violence the night of that call, court records show. It is not clear if he was convicted of a crime related to that incident.

Cabrera filed a protection order the next day, court records show. The application for the order was filed from a shelter for victims of domestic violence. The custody battle for Nova dates back to 2013, records show.

Knaub’s stated in his June 1 request for joint custody that he had not seen his son since May due to a no-contact order, the document shows.

“We enjoy our time together and I am a great parent to him,” Knaub wrote.

The judge denied Knaub’s request on July 11.

Friends down the street

On Thursday evening, a woman in a blue Toyota and a child in the backseat stopped outside the home. She placed a bouquet of roses at the front door. Unlike the night before, no children were playing outside.

Marcus Gulley, 12, and his 13-year-old sister Tamar were heading home for dinner when they heard the screams. There, they saw a mother standing, covered in blood. “Her baby’s hands were tied,” Marcus said. “She said, ‘He killed my son.’”

Some of the nine Gulley children were friends with Nova. They played freeze tag. They drew chalk on the streets. They saw him in mornings walking to the bus stop. He waved at the older kids as they went off to school.

Brianna Brown, their 23-year old sister, said her siblings are struggling with their friend’s death.

“You don’t know how to explain that to kids,” she said.

Earlier in the night, the family noticed a black motorcycle with pink and green spray paint on it, running with its lights on outside their home. They didn’t realize until later it belonged to Knaub.

“Why are they killing the kids?”

Standing near the crime tape blocking off Partridge Hill Street at Timberleaf Court Wednesday night, several neighbors in pajamas, a few with dogs on leashes, lamented the proximity in time and distance of the two deadly domestic incidents.

“Why are they killing the kids? I don’t understand that part,” Diana Serotta said. “Leave the kid out.”

Serotta, 23, recalled passing the Norton Peak Avenue house on neighborhood walks. She remembers waving at Cabrera, who would wave back. Serotta said their interactions were often limited to small talk, but they were always friendly.

Another neighbor, who only wanted to be identified as Susana, mentioned the pervasiveness of domestic violence across communities and backgrounds.

Nova’s death marks the 102nd homicide Metro has investigated this year, and the 121st investigated within Clark County. There have been at least five murder-suicides, including this one, in the Las Vegas Valley this year. This month, a man shot and killed his infant son and girlfriend before killing himself.

That tragedy happened just miles from where Nova died.

“I don’t have words to explain another incident like this,” McGrath said outside the home Wednesday night. “We’ve had too many of these. As a community I think, we really need to come together because of innocent people and children losing their lives.”

Contact Blake Apgar at bapgar@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5298. Follow @blakeapgar on Twitter. Contact Briana Erickson at berickson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5244. Follow @brianarerick on Twitter. Contact Mike Shoro at mshoro@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mike_shoro on Twitter.

Review-Journal staff writer Max Michor contributed to this report.