Las Vegas man accidentally shoots, kills grandmother, police say
A 19-year-old man accidentally shot and killed his grandmother in the northeast valley Thursday morning, Las Vegas police said.
The killing snaps Clark County’s longest stretch this year without a homicide, with the last occurring 16 days earlier on Aug. 15.
Police responded at 9:10 a.m. to a home on the 6800 block of Fallona Avenue, near Lake Mead and Hollywood boulevards. The woman, in her early 60s, was taken to University Medical Center, where she died about 10 a.m.
Her 19-year-old grandson was trying to clear a handgun in one room while she slept in another, Metropolitan Police Department Sgt. Matthew Sanford told reporters. The gun fired a round and hit the woman in the other room.
The gun will be tested to determine whether it malfunctioned, he said.
Police are investigating the shooting as an accident, but it will be submitted to the Clark County district attorney’s office for review, Sanford said. The grandson is cooperating with police, he said.
Standing in her doorway Thursday evening, neighbor Norniece Carter called the 19-year-old “a nice young man.” She recalled a time when he helped her push her car when it stalled out.
“Ever since that day, I always speak to him when he passes and say hi,” Carter said.
She remembered seeing the grandmother leaving with a young child, and they each waved. She knew the grandson better than she knew the grandmother.
“It’s just a very tragic situation,” she said.
Members of both families living next door to the grandmother and grandson didn’t know them personally, they said in interviews late Thursday.
“It’s pretty terrifying what happened,” next-door neighbor Diana Martinez said.
The grandmother lived with the family, said Marlene Garcia, another next-door neighbor. She said she wasn’t home at the time of the shooting, but she had seen the grandson hang out with his friends outside.
Before Thursday’s killing, the most recent homicide came Aug. 15, when DaeVon Branon-Banks died at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center. Police said the toddler was thrown across a room two days before he died.
The county’s longest stretch without a homicide does not include the death of a 19-year-old woman, whose body was found last Friday. Homicide detectives initially assisted in the investigation, but police said Saturday that they were not treating the incident as a homicide until they had more information.
Police called the death suspicious, and the woman’s cause of death is still pending at the coroner’s office.
Thursday’s homicide is the 111th investigated by Metro this year and the 131st investigated in Clark County.
Contact Blake Apgar at bapgar@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5298. Follow @blakeapgar on Twitter. Contact Mike Shoro at mshoro@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Follow @mike_shoro on Twitter.
