Neighbor describes east Las Vegas shootout that left 2 dead
Mario Carillo was getting his mail Thursday afternoon when he witnessed what would become a fatal shootout on his quiet east valley street.
A man and a woman died. A third person was injured but is expected to survive, police said. And a child at the scene was not hurt.
Carillo was at his mailbox about 12:30 p.m. when he first noticed the man and woman arguing just down the road, he recalled Friday. They were loud, “but I just kept to myself,” Carillo said.
As he walked back into his home, though, Carillo noticed the man yelling had something black in his hand. Carillo thought it was a cellphone, but when he got inside, he grabbed a pair of binoculars to check. That’s when he realized the man was aiming a gun at the woman.
The 39-year-old called police as fast as he could, he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
“I told them not to come with sirens and to come quietly,” Carillo said, suggesting that the man might fire the gun if he heard officers coming.
Eyes still on the scene, Carillo witnessed a neighbor in a nearby driveway go inside his home and re-emerge with a rifle. Meanwhile, Carillo noticed a 4-year-old girl meandering through the chaos.
Carillo tried to film the incident while still on the phone with police. But before he could get the camera ready, he heard gunshots.
“Did you just hear that?” Carillo screamed into the phone, scared and frustrated. “I said not to use sirens!”
Within seconds, the man had shot the woman, and the man and the neighbor had exchanged gunfire. The man and woman were later both pronounced dead at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center.
“Nothing like this has ever happened,” Carillo, a five-year resident of the area, said Friday.
Police were called to the 3200 block of Silver Saddle Street after reports of a “domestic disturbance,” Metropolitan Police Department homicide Lt. Ray Spencer said. The residential neighborhood is near South Eastern Avenue and East Desert Inn Road.
The man and woman had been in a car with California plates when the vehicle suddenly stopped and the woman got out, then shuffled her child toward the neighbor in the driveway, who did not know them. The argument escalated into the shooting, then shootout.
The neighbor who fired the rifle was not injured. Instead, a second person who had emerged from the neighbor’s home was struck by the arguing man’s gunfire. That person is expected to survive.
It remains unclear if the man arguing died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound or the neighbor’s rifle round. No charges are expected to be filed against the neighbor.
The Clark County coroner’s office has not yet identified the two who died, but police said the unharmed little girl was placed into the custody of Child Protective Services.
Angela Monroy, 54, said she and her family had just moved to the block three days before the shootout. Monroy spent the majority of the Thursday packing up her old house before pulling up to the shocking crime scene in front of her new home.
“Oh my God, what happened?” she recalled thinking Thursday.
Monroy said she is now scared to live in her new house with her two kids and three grandchildren.
“We thought this was a quiet and safe area,” she said.
Another woman who lives nearby, Elizabeth Maldonado, said she and her son were in the area just after the shooting.
“I take this road to take my son to work almost every day,” the 47-year-old said. “It’s a very quiet neighborhood and I’ve never felt unsafe here.”
On Friday, no one answered the door of the home where the shootout happened. A large splotch of dried blood still marked the driveway.
The incident marked Metro’s 34th homicide investigation this year, according to Review-Journal records.
Contact Jessica Terrones at jt
