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Suspects in deadly holiday shooting in Henderson arrested in Arizona

Updated November 26, 2020 - 9:02 pm

One person was killed and four others were injured on Thursday in a random shooting in Henderson, and authorities are trying to determine if the attack was related to a series of drive-by shootings that occurred hours later in Arizona.

Henderson police said the Arizona Department of Public Safety arrested suspects in the Henderson shooting on unrelated charges near Parker, Arizona, and Arizona authorities said they were investigating a string of shootings there.

Shots were fired during the suspects’ arrests. One suspect was airlifted to a hospital, La Paz County, Arizona, Sheriff William Risen said in an e-mail to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“They are handling multiple shooting scenes,” Risen said of authorities in Arizona.

On Thursday evening, Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesperson Raul Garcia confirmed in a statement that a trooper was involved in a shooting with “possible homicide suspects out of Nevada.” That shooting occurred on state Route 72, southeast of Bouse.

“No troopers were injured, and the three suspects are in custody,” according to Garcia. It remains an active investigation.

Henderson police said they were called at 12:54 a.m. to a 7-Eleven convenience store in the 800 block of East Lake Mead Parkway at Center Street for a shooting. Police simultaneously “received several additional calls for service from different victims alleging that they had been shot at.”

Officers found five people shot in the area. A 22-year-old man was killed, and four others survived their wounds.

Police said the survivors were a 23-year-old woman, an 18-year-old man, a 53-year-old man and a 41-year-old man.

Witnesses told police the suspects were a white man in his 20s or 30s with a beard and a white woman believed to be in her 20s.

“Both suspects were described as having tattoos or paint on their faces,” police said in a statement. “Preliminarily it is believed that the suspects were driving around the city randomly shooting at citizens with no apparent motive.”

Hours later, authorities in La Paz County said Arizona Department of Public Safety investigators were responding to a string of drive-by shootings in the Parker area. The Parker Pioneer reported that three suspects were arrested in a spree of shootings that occurred on state Route 95, north of Parker.

The suspects were arrested on state Route 72 after they rolled their vehicle, the newspaper reported, and Risen indicated that the suspects in the Arizona shootings might be involved in similar shootings in the Las Vegas area.

“There was a series of shootings in the Parker and Bouse areas today,” Risen’s office said on its Facebook page Thursday. “The suspects were finally caught just east of Bouse and taken into custody. We do not believe that there is any further threat or any more suspects in the area.

Multiple scenes are being investigated at this time and we will put out a press release when all the information is gathered.”

At 7:30 a.m. Thursday in Henderson, the 7-Eleven was closed, with crime scene tape blocking off the entry.

Paper and plastic debris, which appeared to be left behind by first responders, was scattered on the ground in front of the store. In two separate areas, shattered glass covered the ground in the parking lot.

A man who lives across the street from the store said his wife heard gunshots overnight — he guessed around 3 a.m. — and then she heard a helicopter flying overhead. The man, who declined to provide his name, said the neighborhood surrounding the store has its share of problems.

“It’s a crime-ridden neighborhood,” the man said. “Thefts. Drugs.”

Other neighbors who live directly across the street said they heard nothing.

Contact Glenn Puit at gpuit@reviewjournal.com. Follow @GlennatRJ on Twitter. Review-Journal digital producer Marvin Clemons contributed to this report.

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