16-year-old boy fatally shot in North Las Vegas
A 16-year-old boy was fatally shot in North Las Vegas on Wednesday evening, marking the city police department’s first homicide investigation this year.
Officers were called about 5:10 p.m. to a residential neighborhood at Coleman Street and San Miguel Avenue, near Simmons Street and West Craig Road, to find a 16-year-old boy suffering from at least one gunshot wound, North Las Vegas Police Department spokesman Aaron Patty said.
#BREAKING Officers are working a homicide near San Miguel & Coleman. Avoid the area. #NLVPD PIO enroute for media.
— NLVPD (@NLVPD) January 10, 2019
The boy was taken to University Medical Center, where he died, Patty said at the scene Wednesday night.
Police had not located a suspect or determined a motive in the shooting Wednesday night, but they do not believe it was random, Patty said.
“We are hopeful that because this was in a residential area that someone did see or hear something,” he said.
It was unclear Wednesday if the boy lived in the neighborhood where the shooting occurred. Patty said police were interviewing neighbors and trying to locate any video surveillance of the shooting.
The boy’s death marked the first homicide investigated by the department in 2019, Patty said. The Clark County coroner’s office will identify the boy and determine his cause and manner of death.
Patty urged anyone with information to call North Las Vegas police at 702-633-9111 or Crime Stoppers at 702-385-5555 to remain anonymous.
Another teenager’s death
The boy’s death was the latest in a string of violence against young people that struck North Las Vegas in the latter months of 2018.
Of the record-breaking 36 homicides investigated by North Las Vegas police last year, 17 occurred from September through December and claimed the lives of six people 19 or younger, according to Las Vegas Review-Journal records.
The most recent North Las Vegas homicide with a young victim was on Christmas Eve, when 18-year-old Kwavon’tia Thomas was shot in a parking lot at about 4:45 p.m. near East Lake Mead Boulevard and McDaniel Street. The suspect in the killing was another teenager — 17-year-old Jarmariun Hickman — who was arrested Dec. 27 and charged with one count of murder with a deadly weapon.
Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.
