Pot, counterfeit bills behind slaying, say North Las Vegas police
An ounce of marijuana paid for with counterfeit money was at the center of an October killing in North Las Vegas, according to police reports.
Corey Donte Jones, 28, of Las Vegas was fatally shot Oct. 17 while riding in a vehicle near West Alexander Road and Revere Street. On Nov. 7, North Las Vegas police arrested a city resident, Michael Jerome Anderson Jr., 21, on an open murder charge.
An affidavit of arrest for Anderson indicates police interviewed the suspect after the shooting. He said he’d sold an individual an ounce of marijuana for $200 during a meeting at a convenience store on West Craig Road on the day of the shooting. After the sale, Anderson told police he realized “he was paid in fake money.”
He and another person — who’s name was redacted in police reports, and who was a passenger in Anderson’s vehicle — then drove after a vehicle they believed contained individuals involved in the drug deal, police said.
“At one point they were driving side by side … when Michael said the front passenger shot five or six times at (the victim),” the report states.
Jones was struck in the chest by gunfire. The driver of the vehicle Jones was in said the vehicle containing the gunman was unknown to him. After Jones was struck, they drove to the Walmart on West Craig Road to wait for the police. Jones was taken to University Medical Center where he was pronounced deceased.
Police inspected the vehicle Jones was in and found an ounce of marijuana and “five counterfeit twenty dollar bills in the vehicle,” police said. No one else has been arrested in the slaying.
Police said in the arrest report they also secured texts from a cellular phone that support the allegations that the shooting was over a drug deal involving counterfeit money.
Anderson is charged with murder, discharging a gun within a vehicle and discharging a gun into an occupied vehicle. A preliminary hearing for Anderson is scheduled for Dec. 2.
