Suspect arrested 3 years after North Las Vegas shooting
Three years after bullets ripped through a front yard in North Las Vegas, narrowly missing a 15-year-old girl and a group of people standing outside, a suspect was arrested this past week.
The shooting happened about 4 p.m. Nov. 29, 2013, in the area of Lance Avenue and Joust Street, near Commerce Street and Carey Avenue, an arrest report reads. Police had initially closed the case in January 2014 because witnesses refused to cooperate.
That changed Aug. 27, when Kenneth Boykin, 19, was shot and killed about a block from where the 2013 shooting happened. Boykin was in the front yard of the November shooting, but no one was injured at the time.
After Boykin’s death, one of the witnesses who initially called police in 2013 “feared violence would continue to harm her and her family if she did not come forward” about the 2013 shooting, the report reads.
Using an interview with that witness, and at least one other witness who came forward, police linked Ashley Christmas, 22, to the 2013 shooting, the report reads. Christmas has known gang affiliations, the report adds.
While talking with investigators, Christmas told police he remembered shooting toward the people in the yard in 2013 “so he could run and leave,” but added that he “didn’t even remember aiming at the group.”
Because evidence at the 2013 scene suggested the shooter continued to fire at the people even after they ran from the yard and into the house, police arrested Christmas on three counts of attempted murder, five counts of assault with a deadly weapon and eight counts of discharging a gun into an occupied structure.
He is booked at the Clark County Detention Center.
Contact Rachel Crosby at rcrosby@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Follow @rachelacrosby on Twitter.
