Boyfriend recalls Las Vegas shootings
Cornelius Mayo heard two gunshots fired in quick succession after his girlfriend opened the front door.
He was in the bathroom of the couple's first-floor apartment in northeast Las Vegas when a gunman entered and began shooting just before 4 a.m. Saturday.
His girlfriend, 28-year-old Derecia Newman, was shot in the head. Her 12-year-old daughter fled screaming into the bathroom, Mayo said, but then ran back out as he was pulling up his pants.
"I don't know why she did that."
The girl, De'Vonia Newman, ran into the path of the gunman and was shot in the stomach. She is clinging to life at University Medical Center, Mayo said. Las Vegas police said Sunday the girl's condition is critical. Her mother, Derecia Newman, died from a gunshot wound to the head.
Police are still investigating the case and think the early-morning shootings on the 5600 block of Meikle Lane, south of Lake Mead Boulevard and east of Nellis Boulevard, might have been drug-related.
Three men knocked on the apartment door, and one of them, described as a black man with a medium build in dark clothing, started firing, police said. At least one of them fled in a dark-colored vehicle.
Mayo, 28, recounted the shooting Sunday in front of his apartment, where the front door was still caked with gray fingerprint dust left by investigators.
Newman and Mayo have three other children, and they were asleep when the shooting broke out. Mayo was not injured because the gunman didn't enter the bathroom, he said.
"They're cowards. She would have given them whatever they wanted," he said of his girlfriend.
He shook his head. "To shoot a girl, plus a little girl."
He said he and Newman had been together for a decade before Saturday's shooting.
"She was just a good, all-around person," he said.
He said he hasn't been able to visit De'Vonia yet because he isn't a blood relative. She's supposed to start sixth grade this year.
Anyone with information on the shootings is encouraged to call the homicide section at 828-3521 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 385-5555.
Contact reporter Lawrence Mower at lmower@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0440.
