Witness: Shooter proclaimed ‘I am God’ during Thanksgiving spree

The shooter, dressed in shorts, pulled out a handgun from the black Toyota Camry. Then he zeroed in on the Chevrolet S-10 with the green LED lights.

“All of this for a couple (expletive) dollars. None of you guys can help me,” witnesses heard the man with bushy, black hair shouting before he took the first shot at the truck parked at a 7-Eleven in Henderson.

It went straight through Jayde Libby’s windshield.

Libby ducked, put the Chevrolet into drive and slammed the gas, hoping she would hit him. She would later testify she heard three more shots as the truck slammed into a light pole. She screamed. Her 22-year-old boyfriend, Kevin Mendiola Jr., covered her.

“I am God, and you’re not,” the shooter yelled in between shots.

Once the firing ceased, Libby had been shot three times.

“I look up, and Kevin’s not breathing anymore,” Libby told a grand jury this year.

It was Thanksgiving, and authorities allege that a trio from Tyler, Texas, had embarked on a series of shootings in Southern Nevada that killed Mendiola and injured several others, including his brother, Christevin. In total, the shootings targeted nearly two dozen people, prosecutors said. It all came to an end in a matter of 11 hours, after a chase, a rollover crash and a shooting involving law enforcement officials in Arizona.

Brothers Christopher McDonnell and Shawn McDonnell, along with his new wife, Kayleigh Lewis, were indicted in the deadly shooting spree on March 17 by a grand jury. Each faces dozens of charges, including murder, terrorism and conspiracy. Prosecutors have said they could seek the death penalty.

The couple made a brief court appearance Friday via video from the Clark County Detention Center, where they were being held without bail. Shawn McDonnell, 31, remained in a wheelchair, having suffered gunshot wounds to his leg during the chase with Arizona troopers. Both pleaded not guilty to the crimes.

“Christopher McDonnell refused to be transported,” District Judge Tierra Jones said before setting a competency hearing for him.

As the case continues to play out in court, new grand jury testimony and surveillance video evidence obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal paint a clearer picture of how the carnage unfolded on Thanksgiving.

Spotted on video

Henderson police Detective Dennis Ozawa testified that he believes the first shootings happened on the road between 12:12 and 12:27 a.m. on Nov. 26. Two more cars were shot at after that, but nobody was injured.

The 26-year-old has a black eye and graying, frizzy hair. With her, authorities say, is Christopher McDonnell, 29, a man with a tattooed face resembling a skull. Michael Zack testified that he had just gotten up from the slot machine when he saw the pair walk in.

Zack said he walked out and watched the two head back to their black Toyota Camry. Its lights were on, and it was missing a hubcap. Both back doors of the car were open when he heard the first shot. It was 12:54 a.m. Zack took cover behind a bench before hearing several more gunshots.

“Don’t worry, I still see you,” the tattooed man told him, according to testimony.

Zack said he then heard a ricochet behind him and dashed behind an electrical box. Craig Fletcher, who was watching from his car, testified that he heard two gunmen laughing as they unloaded into the Chevrolet truck that crashed into the pole.

“I saw him unload the gun and reload it …” he said. “Like it was a video game.”

‘My daughter is in the back seat’

In a gold Buick SUV parked in front of the store, Brooke Spangler waited for her father, Seth, to finish shopping. Her 2-year-old daughter was in the back seat. When she heard yelling, she grew increasingly nervous and called her father and pleaded for him to come out.

When Seth Spangler walked out of the convenience store, he was immediately shot by a tattooed man, he testified. The bullet punctured his lung, and he was bleeding out of his back.

“I call him Skeletor,” he testified about his assailant, referring to the barbed wire ink around the man’s eyes.

Seth Spangler ducked back into the 7-Eleven and told the clerk to dial 911. They both went out the back exit.

Seconds later, the store’s surveillance video shows a flash of a woman identified as Lewis pulling open the front door, holding a 9 mm Smith & Wesson. She looks around the empty store and runs back out. In the same video, authorities say, Shawn McDonnell is seen putting his face to the glass door.

After Brooke Spangler’s father was shot, she saw the same man standing next to her window with a gun.

“I pleaded for my life. I said, ‘Please don’t shoot. I don’t have any money. You can take my car. You can take anything you want. Please don’t shoot. Please don’t shoot. My daughter is in the back seat,’” she testified.

He then went to the back door and pointed the gun at her child, who was screaming, she said.

“He comes to my window and tells me something along the lines of I am very lucky,” she said, adding that the man then turned to his left and began shooting and yelling at a white Honda Prelude.

Christevin Mendiola, who did not ride with his brother, was in the driver’s seat of a different vehicle. The first bullet grazed his stomach, he later testified. The second shattered his bone and lodged into his rib cage.

“I heard him say he was God and that there is an upcoming war coming,” Brooke Spangler said, also noting that she saw Lewis pacing in front of the 7-Eleven.

As the shooting continued, Brooke Spangler said, she hopped in the back to shield her screaming daughter.

“Stay calm,” she told the girl as she dialed 911.

After all the shots stopped, witnesses heard tires screech and testified that they heard Lewis say, “Come on, come on.”

She was driving the car, full throttle, into the wrong lane of travel with her lights off.

‘God’s will’

On the road, another driver was struck in the arm as he headed to Lake Las Vegas. In a matter of hours, 14 victims — five of whom are children — would be targeted by the gun violence in Arizona.

Mary and Ronald Stevic, their son Brian Green and their granddaughter were traveling north on state Route 95 just before 9 a.m. when they saw the black Toyota Camry in the southbound lane. They told authorities the car appeared to be broken down, Detective Jeremy Johnson of the La Paz County Sheriff’s Office testified.

As they approached the car, they saw a man with dark hair and a beard standing outside the passenger side. The family also reported seeing a woman with shoulder-length hair brandish a black handgun. She pointed it at the car and fired a single round, Johnson said.

After the trio had been arrested outside of Bouse, Arizona, Johnson interviewed Lewis in jail.

She asked for a Bible. She said they came out West to take Christopher McDonnell to see the mountains and to play poker in Las Vegas. She told the detective they broke down and rented a Toyota Camry and that she had been the primary driver. The car had Virginia plates.

Lewis called the car dirt-colored “because it rolled so much the last time she saw it,” Johnson testified.

While recovering at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center in Las Vegas, Christopher McDonnell asked to speak to a detective. Detective Ozawa testified that Christopher McDonnell told him the group had traveled as far as Washington, D.C., and had brought with them three firearms and a lot of ammunition.

Christopher McDonnell was convicted in 2018 of felony assault and was released on parole in August. He claimed he didn’t shoot anybody.

“Christopher advised that Shawn had made statements to him saying that there was a war coming,” Johnson testified. “And that it was God’s will that he start shooting people.”

Contact Briana Erickson at berickson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5244. Follow @ByBrianaE on Twitter.