Party incidents spur police warnings about texting

Before Karen Brill opens her eyes in the morning, she already can feel the tears welling.

Her 16-year-old son, Aric Brill, who was a junior at Global Community High School, was shot and killed at an east valley house party in February.

The pain still lingers.

"I still get sick to my stomach every morning," she said. "He was the light of my life."

Witnesses said Aric Brill and another boy were jumped by four men outside the party. When they resisted, one man pulled two handguns and began firing. No arrests have been made.

Brill said she was told partygoers had been texting uninvited friends to join the party, including some known gang members.

"There were only 20 kids invited to that party. I talked to a couple people there after (the shooting) and was told over 100 kids showed up," Brill said.

The phenomenon of mass text messages attracting unwanted, sometimes dangerous guests, is a somewhat new one, said Capt. Patrick Neville of the Metropolitan Police Department's Bolden area command.

But it's a serious one.

Neville said Las Vegas police handled 13 incidents last year in which texting led to confrontations involving high school-age youngsters with weapons and eight more such incidents this year.

It's a problem the department hopes to curb before high school graduation parties start and summer vacation results in less adult supervision.

Neville spoke of an incident last summer when 19-year-old Clark High School graduate Chris Luscombe and 18-year-old David Miramontes were killed in a shooting at Bob Baskin Park, on Oakey Boulevard near Rancho Drive. The confrontation was set up, witnesses said, through text messages.

"They never had a chance to get their lives started," Neville said.

Marie Passante, Luscombe's mother, said she isn't sure what could have been done to save him.

"I feel guilty as a mom," she said. "Did I do enough to prepare him? Did I teach my children to defend themselves? I think so, I hope so. In this instance, those kids didn't have a chance to defend themselves."

At a news conference held Tuesday to bring awareness to the issue, Neville said he does not expect parents to stop their children from texting, but he wants them to understand the possible repercussions.

"If you and I have a conversation (on the phone), that's just us," Neville said. "But when I text 20 people at a time, it creates a shotgun effect. ... When (the text) gets to some of these gangster kids, that's when things start happening."

Neville said that friends need to be "real" friends in those situations: Don't invite people you don't know to parties, don't let your friends drive after drinking and don't let people bring weapons.

For parents, the key is supervision and taking an active role in the lives of their children.

"A lot of times in these cases, their parents are non-existent," he said. "Their kids say, 'I'm going to Johnny's house,' but who's Johnny? The parents just buy what the kids are selling."

Brill said there was parental supervision at the party her son attended, but it didn't help.

Passante said her son was a young adult who made his own decisions.

"He was a good kid. ... He wasn't part of a gang," Passante said. "Aside from keeping my kids in a closet the rest of their life, I'm not sure I could have done anything different."

Chris Luscombe's sister, Nicole Luscombe, 21, said she never felt her family was the problem.

"My parents definitely did everything they could to arm us to be responsible adults," said Luscombe, who attends the College of Southern Nevada. "It was an unfortunate series of events by someone without great parenting in their lives, who wasn't supervised, and thought it was OK to use guns to settle problems."

Jessie James Cole, 22, faces multiple charges in the Baskin Park shooting, including two counts of murder with a deadly weapon. He is being held without bail at the Clark County Detention Center.

Police hope that this summer will be better.

Neville said that in-school violence this year has been declining, and he hopes that will carry over into summer.

Laura Gault, an assistant principal at Clark High School, said the partnership between police, schools and the community is a strong one.

The decrease in school violence, she said, is a reflection of the willingness of administrators and teachers to invest in their youngsters' lives.

"They're as invested after school as they are in school," she said. "They're our students when school is in session, but we're part of a bigger community."

For Brill, the pain of losing a son will always stay with her.

To prevent her son's tragedy from being repeated, she would warn any student to be wary of strangers at their parties. Like a virus, she said, texting spreads word to gang members about where the booze is.

"(Texts) are like HIV," she said. "One person gets it, then another, then another."

And gang members are waiting for those calls.

"That's how they make their money," Brill said. "Those cowards will take teenagers' lives for $5."

Contact reporter Mike Blasky at mblasky@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0283.