Man arrested in wife’s beating death, Las Vegas police say

A teenage boy called 911 Friday afternoon to get help for his mother, whom he believed was beaten to death with a baseball bat by his father, Las Vegas police said.

About 4:30 p.m., a boy in his “early teens” called 911 from a gas station near the Summerhill Pointe Apartments, near Sahara Avenue and Fort Apache Road, to report he believed his mother had been “bludgeoned to death” by his father, Metropolitan Police Department homicide Lt. Ray Spencer said Friday night. When officers found the boy, he told them his father hit his mother with a baseball bat.

Officers then went to check on the woman at an apartment in the complex. When no one answered the door, officers climbed through an open bedroom window, Spencer said.

Inside, a woman in her early 30s was lying on the bed with “an obvious head injury,” he said. Her husband was lying next to her.

The man, in his late 30s, appeared to be uninjured, Spencer said. Officers also found a baseball bat in the home.

The woman had a faint pulse when officers arrived, Spencer said, but she died after being taken to University Medical Center.

Police had to give “multiple commands” to the man before he was arrested, Spencer said.

Officers responded to another domestic disturbance call involving the couple in February, but it was at a different apartment complex, he said.

While police car lights still shone from the apartment complex behind him, Spencer urged anyone suffering from domestic violence to seek help to avoid a similar “tragic incident.”

“I stress, anybody going through any type of domestic violence type situation, there are a lot of community resources out there,” he said.

The woman’s identity, as well as her cause and manner of death, will be released by the Clark County coroner’s office.

Her death marks the 41st homicide investigated by Metro this year, and the 56th homicide in Clark County, according to Review-Journal records.

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.