Man who shot himself after standoff with Las Vegas police dies

A man died by suicide this week after police tried negotiating with him for about an hour last week in the southwest valley, Las Vegas police announced.

Matthew Seccombe, 35, had been threatening to kill himself outside of his ex-girlfriend’s home on March 13 before he shot himself, Metropolitan Police Department Deputy Chief Andrew Walsh told news media Wednesday.

Seccombe was taken to University Medical Center in critical condition. He died there Monday of a gunshot wound to the head, and his death was ruled a suicide, the Clark County coroner’s office said.

Seccombe’s ex-girlfriend called police at 10:11 p.m. on March 13 to report Seccombe was outside her house on the 7000 block of Salt Marsh Court, near South Fort Apache and West Warm Springs roads. She had a protection order against Seccombe, who struggled to cope with their breakup, Walsh said.

Domestic disturbance calls are often among the most “volatile” situations that police and the public can encounter, he said.

“Emotions run high and people often find themselves in situations that they don’t know how to get out of,” Walsh said.

Police arrived and set up a perimeter around him in the neighborhood, and a crisis-trained officer spoke with him in an effort to get him to surrender peacefully, Walsh said. He hadn’t surrendered after about an hour of negotiating, and police decided to fire a 40mm foam projectile at Seccombe and try to take him into custody with help from a K9 service dog, Walsh said.

Helicopter footage played at the news conference showed Seccombe recoil upon getting hit in the thigh and then run behind a car. There, he shot himself in the head, police said.

“We do everything we can to slow the momentum on this, preserve the life of everybody involved including the person that’s out there,” Walsh said. “But there does come a point where you have to deal with the fact that he is on a public street,” particularly because police had been told he was armed with a gun.

Henderson Justice Court records indicate Seccombe had been charged with stalking, a misdemeanor, in late February. He posted bond and had an arraignment scheduled for Monday morning. He died that evening.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the stalking crime involved his ex-girlfriend, who was uninjured in last week’s events outside her home.

Had Seccombe survived the shooting, he would have faced charges of resisting arrest with a gun and violation of a protection order.

Contact Mike Shoro at mshoro@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Follow @mike_shoro on Twitter.