Deadly CiCi’s Pizza ambush still fresh in the minds of Metro

As is often the case, officers heading out on the morning shift planned to eat in pairs.

But this particular day, June 8, 2014, would not be a routine Sunday.

When he heard the radio traffic say two officers on their break had been shot at a CiCi’s Pizza near Stewart Avenue and Nellis Boulevard, Nicol looked at his watch.

At 11:22 a.m., only two officers from his squad in that area were on break.

Within minutes, much of the department knew officers Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo were down. It would take several more hours to understand how it happened.

Nicol, 48, has spent much of his 12-year career patrolling the same part of the valley as Soldo, in the Northeast Area Command. The two worked in sister squads for a while and were in the same unit on the day of the shooting.

Much of the training Nicol said he’s received with Metro, including defensive and close-quarter tactics, came from Beck. He was renown for his expertise as a training officer before transferring back to patrol and to the Northeast Area Command just months before the ambush.

The morning was going smoothly for the squad for the first few hours. Nicol and his partner were at the Clark County Detention Center booking a suspect on a felony charge when the calls of shots fired started coming over the airwaves.

Dispatchers tried to radio the officers.

But neither answered.

“That’s when I knew,” Nicol said recently, reflecting on the one-year anniversary of the slayings.

Nicol and his partner told the sergeant at CCDC they had to leave right then, and headed toward CiCi’s.

QUICKLY CHANGING SITUATION

As they got closer, the radio traffic “started to get bad,” Nicol said.

The call initially came in as shots fired, but changed quickly. The next broadcast was that two officers were involved in a shooting. Then came reports that Beck and Soldo had been ambushed and shot inside the pizza parlor.

By the time Nicol and his partner reached the area, anti-government, anti-police zealots Jerad and Amanda Miller were inside an adjacent Wal-Mart. They had already shot and killed shopper Joseph Wilcox, 31, who had tried to stop the rampage. Then they prepared for what investigators now believe was intended to be a lengthy gunfight with a five-officer tactical team that entered the store.

Nicol grabbed his rifle and stormed through the front doors.

Having spent more than a decade patrolling the area, Nicol knew exactly where the security room for that particular Wal-Mart was. He quickly made his way there, but found the door locked.

Officer Ryan Fryman, who had also run into the store, kicked the steel security door five times — fracturing his leg in the process — before it finally gave and they were able to reach the camera controls, Nicol said.

With the help of a security guard, Nicol trained a camera on the Millers as they positioned themselves in the automotive area of the store.

Nicol was able to feed what he was seeing over the cameras to the officers engaged in the shootout.

Minutes later, Jerad, 31, and Amanda, 22, were dead. In the Wal-Mart wreckage, the Millers left behind a shotgun and four handguns, including two taken from Beck and Soldo, and about 200 rounds of ammunition. They had a small stockpile of knives, camouflage clothing, military-issue rations and first-aid supplies.

The rampage was over in less than 30 minutes.

As soon as it was, responding officers’ thoughts switched back to their fallen colleagues.

“At that point most of us didn’t know Alyn’s and Igor’s conditions,” Nicol said.

Officers were ushered across the street to a PetSmart for debriefing. There, Nicol met up with his squad supervisor, Sgt. Jimmy Oaks.

Oaks broke the news. Soldo and Beck were gone.

“It was pretty …” Nicol said, then paused and looked down. “Pretty devastating. Immediately you’re thinking of the families. They both had brand new little babies. It was tough.”

Beck, 41, was a father of three who hailed from Green River, Wyo. He came to Metro in 2001.

Soldo, 31, was born in Bosnia and moved with his family to the United States as a boy. He moved to Las Vegas from Lincoln, Neb., and joined Metro in 2006. His first child was not even a year old when he died.

‘IT HELPED ME GET THROUGH’

Nicol spent the next two months on leave, mentally recovering from what happened. He was one of the first officers to return to duty when he went back to patrol on Aug. 2.

Known for their humor, Nicol said, Soldo and Beck’s presence was missed immediately. “They could have been comedians. They had that spitfire attitude. Just always on their ‘A’ game,” Nicol said. “To come into briefing, and not have that … it was tough.”

At their funerals, colleagues drew laughter with stories about their wit. Soldo once playfully chided a fellow officer he outran while chasing a suspect.

Sgt. Oaks said at Beck’s funeral that he made him a better supervisor by keeping him on his toes.

Without Beck and Soldo at work, Nicol said, the void was palpable.

“It was different. A little on edge,” Nicol said. “Wanting to get back into it, wanting to do my job. Wanting to continue the fight for Alyn and Igor, because I knew in my heart that there was no way that they would want us to give up and quit.”

He didn’t get much of a break. On Nicol’s second day back on the job, Oaks was involved in an officer-involved-shooting during a home invasion. After being back on patrol for just a few days, Oaks was again on leave.

With their sergeant out, Nicol stepped up. As one of the squad’s senior members he took on a leadership role as the rest of the squad trickled back from leave, acting as pseudo-therapist for his fellow officers.

“It gave me the opportunity to sit down with them and talk about the problems they were having and what was causing their flashbacks and what was affecting them,” Nicol said.

But helping other officers had a surprising effect on him.

“By me talking to them, it helped me get through it as well,” he said.

Lisa Hank, director of Metro’s Police Employee Assistance Program, or PEAP, said Nicol’s willingness to listen went a long way toward helping other officers.

PEAP is dedicated to providing assistance and emotional support to Metro employees and their family members.

“Sometimes you just need someone to talk to,” Hank said. “When you have a peer that can understand what you’ve seen and been through, and they can empathize and relate, you feel more readily able to express how you’re feeling.”

How officers handled the ambush mentally and emotionally varied widely across the department, Hank said, adding that she couldn’t go into specifics.

“There is no right or wrong way,” Hank said. “There is no too long or too short of a time frame to return to duty.”

Nicol said he has always been taught to stay aware of his surroundings, but after the killings, he became almost paranoid.

“I think I was going overboard,” Nicol said. “It was to the point that it was almost taking away from my job because I was too worried about everything that was around me.”

While that feeling subsided after a few weeks back on the job, certain things have stayed with him. Whether at work or with his family, Nicol said he will only sit at a table in a restaurant when he can have his back against a wall. He’ll wait as long as needed for a safe spot to become available, he said.

A handmade wooden plaque with the names of Soldo and Beck engraved into side-by-side crosses now sits next to the briefing room door.

Beck and Soldo’s names are the last things officers see before they start their shift. That plaque, Nicol said, is a daily reminder to officers to stay safe and vigilant.

Contact reporter Colton Lochhead at clochhead@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4638. Find him on Twitter: @ColtonLochhead