A Las Vegas man was fired last week and then tried to exact street vengeance against his former employer. Things did not end well.
In a quick and brutal twist of fate, the fired man is now dead, his onetime boss is recuperating in a hospital, and a third man drawn into the dispute has become an unwilling killer, according to police.
A great deal of the melee was caught on camera.
The incident began at the site of a home remodel on Dover Place near Cory Place and Charleston Road in the valley area of Sin City.
At around 6:33 p.m., police responded to reports of a man in an SUV trying to run over a pedestrian, according to Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Homicide Lt. Jason Johansson.
Several other 911 calls about an SUV driver trying to mow a man down were fielded by dispatchers as officers were en route, police said.
The pedestrian was in charge of the construction project and the SUV driver had been fired earlier that day after he arrived at the job site “in a condition where he was not fit to do his job,” Johansson said during a press briefing. After that, a “verbal altercation” ensued, and then the fired man got into his vehicle, sights set on his former boss.
Before officers could even arrive, another 911 call came in: the man driving the SUV had died in a shooting, Johansson said.
The “dark-colored” SUV was discovered by law enforcement idling on the sidewalk after having crashed into a fence at the intersection of Cory Place and Dover Place, according to police. Inside, the driver was clearly dead from “a gunshot wound,” Johansson said.
An investigation into the hectic, action film-like violence relied on the testimony of several witnesses at the scene and was buoyed by home surveillance footage, according to law enforcement.
Two people were hit by the SUV as it wildly careened through the streets and onto the sidewalks that night, police said. One person suffered only minor injuries. The driver’s former boss, however, suffered “major” injuries, according to Johansson. None of the injuries caused by the SUV driver were life-threatening, police said.
Steven Bowman, who lives on the street where the driver was apparently trying to wreak havoc, suffered a laceration to his left leg caused by debris from a knocked-down wall, he told Las Vegas-based CBS affiliate KLAS. But, the neighbor says, he almost lost his life.
“I heard somebody say, ‘He’s coming back,’ and I couldn’t move,” Bowman told KLAS. “He didn’t care who he was coming after.”
Footage obtained by the TV station shows the SUV driver reversing and striking the targeted man. The construction boss then falls and is knocked into an adjacent wall by the SUV, according to KLAS.
Video also shows Bowman, at one point, jumping over a wall to avoid the errant SUV.
The aftermath of the incident — marked by property destruction — suggests the SUV driver tore through three yards and several walls and fences in pursuit of the man who fired him, the TV station reports.
Additional footage obtained by both KLAS and Las Vegas-based ABC affiliate KTNV shows how the attacks ended: a man with a raised shotgun unloads three times directly into the path of the oncoming SUV as the vehicle plows through a white picket fence.
In comments to KLAS, neighbor Ana Tilley said her 27-year-old grandson was the shooter.
“He was hollering at him, ‘Stop! Stop!’ And the guy wouldn’t stop,” Tilley told KLAS. “I said, ‘Throw me the gun.’ No. He raised the gun, and I saw him and I thought, ‘Oh my god! Oh my god!’ He’s just gonna raise the gun. But he raised it. And the guy just kept coming at him.”
The shooter was later taken into custody and was cooperative, police said. According to Tilley, her grandson was released the next morning.
The names of the deceased and his ex-boss are not yet public.
Law&Crime reached out to the Las Vegas police with several requests for additional details on this story. In an email, a spokesperson said: “This case remains an ongoing investigation.”