Man wearing Halloween mask killed by North Las Vegas police

After police fatally shot a man who they say was wearing a Michael Myers-style mask and pulling a gun on people near the Martin Luther King, Jr. statue in North Las Vegas on Monday night, a crowd of the man’s family and friends, as well as some curious local residents, gathered across the street.

They were there, about 200 strong, to comfort each other, demand answers and be together. But as the crowd gradually thinned out toward midnight, the dead man’s sister, Latavia Porter, remained sitting with a few friends and relatives at the bus stop across the street from the shooting scene.

“I’m numb, heartbroken,” said Porter, 36, who lived with her brother in Las Vegas after growing up with him in the same North Las Vegas neighborhood, near MLK Boulevard and Carey Avenue, where Monday’s shooting took place.

While police hadn’t identified the man who was killed, saying the Clark County Coroner’s Office would do so, the man’s mother, Sharon Sanders, Porter, and others identified him as Christopher Smith. Sanders shared a photo with reporters.

“He’s a good guy,” Porter said. “He was goofy. He knew everybody.”

The Clark County coroner’s office Tuesday identified the man as Christopher Earl Smith Jr., 44, of Las Vegas. He died of gunshot wounds of the trunk and was shot in the right arm and left leg. His death was ruled a homicide, according to the coroner.

North Las Vegas Police Department spokesperson Officer Alexander Cuevas said the events that would lead to the shooting began at about 5:20 p.m. Monday when a 911 caller said a man had pulled a gun on him at the Martin Luther King, Jr. statue.

The call was dropped. When the 911 dispatcher tried to call the caller back, there was no answer. Police went to the scene but couldn’t find the person described by the caller or the caller, Cuevas said.

At 5:35 p.m., the same caller called 911 again to say the man was at the carwash across the street from the statue. The caller said he didn’t answer the dispatcher’s call back attempt after the first call had been dropped because “he was trying to avoid being shot,” Cuevas said.

“The initial caller said the man was wearing a Halloween mask and was threatening and pointing a gun at him and other people,” Cuevas said in a briefing to reporters just after 10:30 p.m.

At 5:39 p.m., another person called 911 from a nearby minimart to say the man had pulled a gun on customers and had walked out into the middle of the street and was was walking toward the MLK statue, which stands in a park in front of the North Las Vegas Justice Court.

This caller also noted that the man with the gun was also wearing green shoes and green socks, Cuevas said.

“Upon arrival the first officer made contact with the suspect who was wearing a Michael Myers-style Halloween mask in the park,” Cuevas said.

“During the interacting with the suspect the officer repeatedly asked the suspect to stop, put his hands up and not to reach for his firearm,” Cuevas said. “The suspect ignored the officer’s commands and pulled a firearm from his waistband with numerous bystanders in the immediate vicinity.

“The officer fired his duty weapon, striking the suspect,” Cuevas said.

Meanwhile, a man standing behind the cameras at the police press briefing could be heard yelling, “Y’all lying!” and “Y’all lying on that man!”

Cuevas said the officer, whom he didn’t identify, wasn’t injured and was put on paid administrative leave.

Brenda Potee, 65, of North Las Vegas, described Smith as a “good person.”

Potee said she was in shock because Smith was just at Potee’s house on Saturday for a party.

“My sister got engaged and he was there and he was eating all the food, of course,” Potee said with a bit of a laugh. “When I got the phone call tonight (about the shooting), I was shook.”

Porter said part of the reason there had been such a large crowd was that she and Smith had grown up in that neighborhood, and they knew a lot of people who live there.

Smith loved the Green Bay Packers and the Boston Celtics, Porter said. He listened to rap music. Artists like Scarface, Lil Wayne, and Drake, among others. He could talk your ear off. He always described his family members as “kinfolk.”

Porter said that she doesn’t want to just hear explanations from police about what happened Monday. She said she wants hard proof, from the police bodycam footage or any other surveillance video that might’ve captured the incident, to tell her what happened.

Cuevas said police would be releasing the body camera footage from the shooting as soon as possible.

“We are going to try and work diligently on that to get it out to the media as soon as possible, to try and be as transparent as possible,” Cuevas said.

Contact Brett Clarkson at bclarkson@reviewjournal.com or 561-324-6421. Follow @BrettClarkson_ on Twitter.