Homicides dip slightly in 2023; police work to close cases

SirArmani Clark sat on the living room floor of his parents’ southeast Las Vegas apartment with his younger brother watching “SpongeBob SquarePants” on a Tuesday evening.

“We just heard a boom,” the boys’ mother, Justine Tate, said this week while recalling the March 7 night.

A bullet tore through a wall and hit 9-year-old SirArmani in the head, killing him, and injuring 6-year-old Honor Tate.

Nearly 100 people were killed across the valley in the first half of 2023, and 70 of them were shot to death. SirArmani was the youngest, according to data maintained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Homicides are down valley-wide, and in Las Vegas police’s jurisdiction, through the first half of 2023 compared with last year. In Clark County, law enforcement have investigated at least 98 killings, with 76 of them in the Metropolitan Police Department’s jurisdiction.

Nearly four months after the 9-year-old died, no one has been charged in the shooting.

Honor still has bullet fragments in his lower body, his mother said, which require monthly visits to the doctor.

“He’s scared of a lot of sounds, and he doesn’t feel too comfortable being away from me for too long,” Justine Tate said.

A week after SirArmani was killed, Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill said the shooter had been arrested and accused of possession of more than 500 fentanyl pills. He refused to name the suspect or say whether drugs had any connection to the shooting.

Tate said she knows someone was arrested but criticized police for not providing her and her family more updates on how the investigation had progressed.

“What the sheriff briefed you is correct, we know who shooter is,” Metro homicide Lt. Jason Johansson said in an interview last week. “The shooter in that investigation was arrested and charged unrelated to our case. Right now, the main aspect of that investigation is substantiating intent versus neglect, and how we’re going to pursue that.”

Johansson said investigators were deciding whether the man would be charged with murder or manslaughter.

SirArmani loved football and aspired to be a lawyer.

Justine Tate said he would talk about buying her a mansion and living next door. She said SirArmani was a protector of his two younger brothers, Honor and 5-year-old Marjon Collins. Since her son’s death, Justine Tate said the pain has only increased.

“He was everybody’s best friend, and there is no way I can get him back,” Tate said. “There’s nothing we can do to fix the situation — nothing in this world that can take this pain away.”

Johansson said random killings, like the stray bullet that killed SirArmani, were down this year, but the department’s domestic killings increased about 80 percent compared with the same time last year.

Homicide data maintained by the Review-Journal showed that Metro investigated 16 domestic killings in the first half of 2023, compared with five in the first six months of 2022.

“What we’re seeing is that it usually isn’t the first sign of violence that occurred in the relationship,” Johansson said. “It wasn’t the first time that there was something wrong, and that person didn’t want that whole relationship to end and took the life of the victim.”

‘I’m trying to survive’

Elizabeth Amigon Vazquez lives in Philadelphia and was across the country when her oldest daughter, 22-year-old Ashley Benitez, was fatally shot on Jan. 31 inside her downtown Las Vegas apartment.

Her boyfriend, Jesus Navarrette, 23, called police after Benitez was shot, and he has since been in custody at Clark County Detention Center on a murder charge. He told police that his AR-15 accidentally fired during a fight between him and Benitez.

Amigon Vazquez said that although months have passed, she still can’t believe her daughter is gone.

“I’m trying to survive,” she said.

Amigon Vazquez described Benitez as kind, respectful and caring for other people.

“My daughter was a beautiful soul, a beautiful person,” she said.

Navarrette was charged with murder on Feb. 2, and he is due in court on July 25.

“It hurts me the most when you know she tried to help him,” Amigon Vazquez said. “I know that because she told me, and look at what he did to her.”

Making arrests

Metro considers a case solved when a suspect has been arrested. Johansson said the department had solved about 80 percent of homicides this year, but he expects that number to get closer to the department’s prior years’ clearance rates of 90 percent or higher as the year goes on.

“I know some cases that are open are going to get solved,” he said. “We have a good track record, and there’s cases that we have right now that we will solve, we just need to get to that point in the investigation. That will come with time.”

At a recent public safety town hall, McMahill touted the advancements in technology that helped the department in identifying potential suspects, including a license plate reader set up at the state line.

“We’ve already caught 10 murderers that were either trying to flee our jurisdiction or come into our jurisdiction from California by inputting the plate, and boom we got them,” McMahill said. “They don’t even know we’re behind them until we already have them.”

McMahill declined an interview for this story.

Looking forward to the second-half of the year, Johansson warned that in previous years, house parties have turned deadly. Data maintained by the Review-Journal showed that only two people were killed at parties in 2022, while six people lost their lives during shootings at parties in 2021.

“If you’re going to the party and you realize a bad crowd is there, leave,” he said. “Don’t stay there. Be willing to leave. We’ve had a couple house parties where all day parties turned deadly because the wrong people were invited by one of the partygoers. Unfortunately, it happens and there’s no way to specifically mitigate it.”

Johansson cited the March killing of Omarion Wilson, a 17-year-old partying at The Platinum Hotel & Spa on March 25 when he was shot. Police arrested a 15-year-old suspected killer last week in California, but they did not name the child.

Outside Metro

North Las Vegas Police Department Capt. Adam Hyde said the majority of homicides the department investigates are the result of an altercation or an argument.

“There’s no consistency to a geographical area; it’s very spread out between districts,” he said.

North Las Vegas police consider a homicide solved once an arrest warrant is issued for a suspect. The department’s clearance rate dropped below 70 percent after four fatal shootings at the end of June.

Of the 11 cases considered solved, seven arrests have been made.

“There’s not a number I’m going to put on it,” Hyde said of a yearly goal. “I want our cases to be thoroughly investigated, and our goal is to solve every murder.”

Henderson Police Department officials declined to speak with the Review-Journal for this story.

Two of four people killed in Henderson in the first half of the year died at the hands of officers. Ronald Winborne, 53, was tased and tackled by officers in March after he refused to drop a butter knife, and last month, 53-year-old Steven Brucker was fatally shot by an officer who responded after a reported theft.

The other two killings involved a suspected home intruder shot in self-defense and a party that resulted in a shootout.

Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter. Contact David Wilson at dwilson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @davidwilson_RJ on Twitter.