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Man accused of killing uncle, lived with body for 2 days

Updated May 26, 2023 - 3:45 pm

A man is accused of killing his uncle while attempting to steal his gun, and then living in the home with the body for two days before police found the dead man.

Metropolitan Police Department officers were performing a welfare check around 8 p.m. Thursday in the 1600 block of Nesting Way, near East Owens Avenue and Marion Drive, when they found a man who had been shot to death, according to an arrest report from the department released Friday.

Roy Tuando, 30, had not shown up to work for three days and his boss was worried, according to the arrest report.

At the house, detectives spoke to his nephew, Steven McLucas, 42, who told police Tuando had gone to Florida to visit his wife and he didn’t have a phone number for him.

McLucas called his mother when police asked to speak to someone who would have contact with Tuando.

“(The woman) asked him to step away from McLucas,” detectives wrote in the report. “When the officer was clear of McLucas, (the woman) told him she was concerned for her brother’s (Tuando) safety because he never misses work and does not have a wife in Florida.”

Tuando was found dead on the floor in his bedroom, police wrote. McLucas then told police he tried to take his uncle’s rifle with him on Tuesday to buy fentanyl, but he and his uncle fought over the gun and McLucas told police he shot the man.

“McLucas did not call an ambulance or the police, and shortly after he shot Tuando he took the rifle and left the house to buy Fentanyl,” police wrote. “When McLucas returned home, Tuando was still in the same position, so he closed the bedroom door.”

McLucas had a woman sleep over the next day, and he told police she complained of an “unpleasant smell,” but he did not tell anyone about the shooting.

He was arrested at the scene Thursday and is being held without bail in the Clark County Detention Center on the murder charge and is expected to appear in court Friday afternoon.

McLucas also was charged in North Las Vegas with carrying a concealed weapon without a permit and being a felon in possession of a gun in connection with a March 26 arrest.

He is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in July on those charges.

Clark County District Court records show he was sentenced to a year of probation in 2021 for aiming a firearm at a human and battery constituting domestic violence.

He violated his probation when he was arrested in 2022, according to court records, and plead guilty to child abuse. He was sentenced in November to six months in jail with three months of credit for time already served.

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

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