Man arrested after doorbell video shows beating, possible kidnapping of girlfriend
Tips from the public helped Las Vegas police arrest a man Thursday after he was allegedly seen beating and possibly kidnapping his girlfriend on a home surveillance video.
The Metropolitan Police Department released the video Wednesday night, and by 3 a.m. Thursday they had arrested 23-year-old Darnell Rodgers. He was booked into the Clark County Detention Center and faces charges of kidnapping and domestic battery, jail records show.
In the security camera video, a woman identified in a recently released arrest report as Taryn Couillard was seen crying while she runs to a house screaming for help at 1203 Little Sidnee Drive, near Warm Springs and Interstate 215. She banged on the front door before a man ran from a white car, kicked her and dragged her by her hair into a white, four-door sedan before speeding off.
While a man, later identified as Rodgers, was attacking her, Couillard yelled what police said sounded like, “Darnell stop,” according to the report. She was holding a cellphone and a pair of glasses, but dropped them when Rodgers attacked her, according to the police report. Rodgers grabbed the phone, but police later found the glasses at the scene and kept them as evidence.
Couillard was not hospitalized and the couple’s month-old baby, who was in the car at the time, was unharmed. Police said Thursday that Child Protective Services is handling the case.
According to the arrest report, Couillard told police that she and Rodgers were on their way home from a New Year’s Eve party when they started fighting. She said she had been driving but pulled over and got out of the car to seek help.
Rodgers told police that he was drunk and couldn’t remember the argument, but that he knew it was about money, according to the report. He said he attacked Couillard because he was afraid she was going to leave him.
“I felt like she was going to take my kid away from me,” he said, according to the report.
Officers reviewed all calls for service on the day of the assault and found a call around 3:45 a.m. in another part of town. The victim’s sister had called police to report a fight between her sister and her sister’s boyfriend, whom she described as drunk, according to the arrest report. She had identified the boyfriend as Rodgers and described what he was wearing, which matched what he was wearing in the surveillance video, the report said.
After the surveillance footage was released, someone who knew the couple called police to confirm Rodgers’ identity, police said.
Rodgers, who has only one minor offense on his record, was arrested at the Park 80 Apartments near South Valley View Boulevard and West Desert Inn Road.
“This is a absolutely violent crime. Domestic violence is one of the most horrific crimes we can deal with on a daily basis, one of the most violent crimes,” police Capt. Dennis O’Brien of the South Central Area Command said at a news briefing Thursday afternoon. “These surveillance systems are so helpful for us in following up in countering the crimes to combat these violent crimes in nature.”
Contact Alexis Egeland at aegeland@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0335. Follow @alexis_egeland on Twitter. Review Journal staff writers Max Michor and Sabrina Schnur contributed to this report.
