Henderson IDs four officers, sergeant involved in shooting

Henderson police on Saturday evening released the names of four officers and a sergeant involved in a police shooting Thursday afternoon at a home across the street from a middle school.

The officers are Sgt. Kevin Abernathy, Chad Burgess, Chad Casey, Jesse Hehn and Daniel Medrano. It was not immediately clear if all of the officers fired their weapons during the shooting.

The shooting happened after officers stopped a man and a woman on a motorcycle, which police determined had been stolen in Boulder City, the department has said. The two directed officers to a home on the 300 block of Cannes Street, across from Brown Junior High School, where they said the owner of the motorcycle was.

When officers approached the owner, later identified as 42-year-old Daniel Thornburg, the man shot at them and officers returned fire, police said Thursday night. Thornburg remained in the hospital Friday in critical but stable condition, the department said.

His condition Saturday was unclear.

Abernathy has been employed with the department since August 2003; Burgess since September 2007; Medrano since June 2008; and Casey and Hehn since July 2014, police said Saturday. All are assigned to the department’s field operations bureau.

All of the officers were placed on paid administrative leave while the department investigates.

Thornburg faces charges of attempted murder of a protected person and possession of a stolen firearm, as well as a weapons charge for allegedly being a felon in possession of a firearm.

The police shooting was the second of three since Tuesday in Henderson, which has had eight police shootings this year. At this time last year, police had been involved in three shootings, the only times Henderson police fired their weapons in 2018, according to records maintained by the Review-Journal.

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.