Police end standoff with arrest

A fugitive who barricaded himself in an apartment Wednesday was arrested after a five-hour standoff with Las Vegas police.

Billy Cepero, 35, of Las Vegas, was taken into custody at 12:30 p.m. in an apartment at 485 Naples Drive, near Harmon and Polaris avenues.

He was wanted on five felony charges, including battery of an officer with substantial bodily harm and discharging a firearm into an occupied structure.

Police received an anonymous tip that Cepero was in an apartment in the 300 block of East Harmon. Officers surrounded the residence but he fled to the Naples apartment and barricaded himself inside. No one was home at the time.

Ken Pace, a resident at the Naples apartment complex, said Cepero approached him before breaking into a neighboring apartment.

"He asked me for a black shirt. His white one was all dirty and torn," Pace said. "I told him, 'I don't help fugitives,' and he ran off."

Although Pace was outside with his young son, he said he didn't feel threatened by Cepero, who was unarmed.

"His mouth was bloody and he was scared as hell," Pace said. "He was trembling."

SWAT officers were called. Police did not disclose the tactics they used to apprehend Cepero, but said he was not cooperative and they had to use force to arrest him.

Metropolitan Police Department spokesman Bill Cassell said the felony charges against Cepero stemmed from a May incident where he tried to pull a gun from his waistband in an altercation with police. The gun discharged, striking Cepero in the buttocks. The same round also wounded an officer in the leg, Cassell said.

Cepero was released on bail, but failed to appear in court, Cassell said, adding that Cepero will face additional charges after Wednesday's incident.

Those previous felonies "were just the ones he woke up with," Cassell said.

Cepero's previous criminal history includes robbery, burglary and drug trafficking.

Carlos Carmack lives at the apartment Cepero entered. He was at work during the standoff and returned home 10 minutes after Cepero's arrest.

"I saw all the police cars and didn't know what was going on," he said. "Then I saw it (the apartment) was mine."

Carmack smoked a cigarette as he stepped around pieces of the shattered sliding glass door to his home. The door to the adjacent apartment was still boarded up from a SWAT raid that happened two months ago.

Carmack also noted the apartment he was told he would be moving into had been raided by police since he has been a resident.

"It's starting to get ridiculous," Carmack said. "But there are idiots out there who have to be taken care of."

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