Police arrest suspect in deadly shooting outside Las Vegas bar
Las Vegas police arrested a 43-year-old man in connection with the shooting death of another man outside a central valley bar Saturday morning.
Officers booked Jerry Fitzgerald Jr. into the Clark County Detention Center on a murder charge Tuesday, records show. Metropolitan Police Department homicide Lt. Ray Spencer named him as a suspect Wednesday in the shooting just outside the Stateside Lounge, a bar in a corner business complex that has seen three homicides this year.
About 3:30 a.m., Michael C. Johnson, 48, was shot outside the bar at 931 Las Vegas Blvd. North, near Washington Avenue. He died of multiple gunshot wounds at University Medical Center about an hour later. The coroner’s office ruled his death a homicide.
Detectives determined Johnson and another man got into a fistfight inside the bar before it spilled into the parking lot, where the two traded shots, Spencer said at the time.
The other man escaped before officers arrived, leaving Johnson to bleed in the parking lot.
The area near the bar has been the site of two other recent violent deaths within the last four months. On March 23, Howard Chris Drew, 66, was found stabbed to death just outside the lounge. And roughly a week later, just next door at the Stateside Express convenience store, Robert Lee Cook, 56, was gunned down by a clerk during a “beer skip.”
Metro has arrested murder suspects in each of those killings.
Contact Mike Shoro at mshoro@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Follow @mike_shoro on Twitter.