Woman arrested after homicide may have tried to clean up blood, police report says
A woman arrested after a homicide near downtown Las Vegas on Friday may have tried to clean up blood from the shooting before officers arrived, a police arrest report said.
Porshay Banks, 24, was taken into custody by the Metropolitan Police Department after the fatal shooting of Nelson Navarijo-Padilla.
Police responded just after 1 p.m. Friday to an apartment at 2108 Sunrise Ave., near Fremont Street and Eastern Avenue. Navarijo-Padilla, 22, died on the scene. His body was lying in a walkway between two small apartment buildings.
A witness told police that he heard a gunshot within the apartment and saw a woman, whom the witness later identified as Banks, dragging a man’s body out the front door and leaving him on the sidewalk a few feet away, according to the arrest report.
Officers arrived on the scene and forced their way into the apartment to check for other possible victims. Police saw what looked like a handgun on the living room couch. They also saw “blood, blood transfer and a sponge with what appears to be blood on it” near the apartment entryway, the arrest report said.
Evidence in the apartment points to an attempt to alter the crime scene using cleaning chemicals, the report said.
Banks was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on $5,000 bail to face a felony count of aiding a felony offender.
Banks told police that she did not know Navarijo-Padilla and denied any involvement in the shooting. She said she was sleeping in the apartment and did not hear the shooting, the report said.
She told officers that she did not drag the body outside. She also said she didn’t see anyone else in the apartment when she woke up, and when she decided to leave, she opened the front door and stepped over the body lying just outside, the arrest report said.
Nothing in the arrest report points to a gunman, and Las Vegas police have not identified other suspects.
Contact Wesley Juhl at wjuhl@reviewjournal.com and 702-383-0391. Follow @WesJuhl on Twitter.
