Suspect arrested in 2016 killing of Las Vegas teenager
A suspect has been arrested in the 2016 slaying of a Las Vegas teenager who was robbed and shot while trying to illegally buy a gun, court records show.
Robert Bustos II was shot and killed on July 11, 2016, in the parking lot of a central valley apartment complex. It took about 20 months for police to arrest 25-year-old Bradley Griffin on one count of open murder in the killing.
According to Griffin’s arrest report, he confronted Bustos at the complex to help a friend who had just robbed the teen during the attempted gun purchase. The friend’s name was redacted from Griffin’s arrest report because he was a minor at the time.
The unidentified minor told police in an April 2017 interview, while he was in custody at Spring Mountain Youth Camp for an unrelated offense, that Bustos wanted to buy a gun. But because Bustos was “from a nice neighborhood and not a ghetto kid,” the minor planned with two men, identified in the report as Jason Travis and Andrew Mitchell, to rob Bustos during the transaction.
After taking $350 from Bustos for the gun, the minor left the apartment complex while Bustos, Mitchell and Travis waited in the car. After 30 minutes, Mitchell told Bustos he’d been robbed and then left, the report said.
Travis texted the unnamed minor afterward and told him that Bustos was angry and “freaking out,” and asked for help, saying the teen had stabbed him in the hand with a pair of scissors. The minor responded that someone he knew, later identified as Griffin, would “take care of it,” according to the arrest report.
Bustos was found about 6:30 p.m. with two gunshot wounds. The minor said Griffin bragged about the shooting, and said threatened to kill him if he told the police.
A warrant for Griffin’s arrest was issued in November 2017, and he was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on Sunday, where he is held without bail pending a preliminary hearing on April 20.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the minor was charged in connection with the deadly robbery.
Contact Max Michor at 702-383-0365 or mmichor@reviewjournal.com. Follow @MaxMichor on Twitter.
