Police kill man after he shoots at officers in east Las Vegas

Las Vegas police shot and killed a man Thursday night in the eastern valley.

Police said he shot at officers and had told his girlfriend he wanted officers to kill him prior to the shooting, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.

Metro was alerted of possible gunshots about 10:50 p.m. on the 1700 block of Eddingham Court, near Owens Avenue and Mount Hood Street. Two officers quickly arrived, Capt. Kelly McMahill said. They spoke with a woman who said she had fought with her boyfriend outside of their house.

Her boyfriend shot a gun in the front yard before leaving. Police spoke with her for about 20 minutes.

“She did inform them that the male said he was going to come back to the scene and make the cops shoot him,” McMahill said.

He did come back, she said, and two more officers arrived.

She said police asked him to get out of his pickup and tried to calm him down for about five minutes.

“They also repeatedly informed him that they did not want to hurt him tonight,” McMahill said.

After about five minutes, she said, he pointed a handgun out the driver’s side window and shot between three and five rounds at the first two responding officers.

“At that point, all four officers on scene returned gunfire,” McMahill said. He was hit and killed.

No officers were injured, Sgt. Jeff Clark said.

The four officers will be identified after 48 hours, per Metro’s policy.

The woman was also uninjured. It wasn’t immediately clear if bullets hit neighboring houses.

In addition to the handgun, police said he had a rifle in the truck.

A neighbor on Eddingham called her son about 11:20 p.m. to tell him she heard two loud booms followed by several gunshots. First she heard the two booms, her son Tyrone Triplett said. She told him she then heard 13 gunshots after Metro arrived.

Triplett, 26, said his mom looked out her window and saw a heavy Metro presence, with officers taping off large portions of her street.

“She was more scared than anything,” he said. “She laid on the floor and had her phone in her hand. She didn’t know what to do.”

He said she was not injured. To her knowledge, Triplett said, her house hadn’t been shot.

Triplett’s mother declined to share her name.

This is the eighth police shooting by Metro in 2017. The seventh was Wednesday, when Metro exchanged gunfire with a woman in the northwest valley.

Contact Mike Shoro at mshoro@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mike_shoro on Twitter.