Widow still waiting for answers in husband’s death in southwest Las Vegas

It’s been more than four months since Kathleen Hoy’s husband Robert Hoy was shot to death by a retired police officer, but she is still left without answers about exactly what happened to him and what authorities are doing about it.

“All I know is that it’s with the prosecutor’s office for review,” 61-year-old Kathleen Hoy said in a recent interview. “I have no idea what happened. And I don’t think that I ever will know.”

She and her 33-year-old severely autistic daughter recently relocated to a new residence in Las Vegas for a fresh start.

“We’re just trying to move on,” she said. “There is nothing that will happen no matter what either way. We just focus on the future.”

The Metropolitan Police Department is still reviewing the circumstances of Robert Hoy’s death and has not yet sent the homicide case to the district attorney’s office, according to Public Information Officer Luis Vidal.

Robert Hoy, 69, died of multiple gunshot wounds the afternoon of Nov. 21, outside of his car in the parking lot of the Arroyo Market Square mall at 7200 Arroyo Crossing Parkway, near South Rainbow Boulevard in southwest Las Vegas, according to the Clark County coroner’s office.

Metro later stated that the shooter was a “longtime retired” employee of the department and that the incident unfolded after Robert Hoy “parked his vehicle directly behind” the retiree and Hoy emerged from the car holding a gun.

“The citizen exited his parked vehicle with a firearm and shot Hoy,” Metro said in a news release.

The shooter remained at the scene and cooperated with officers, police said.

“Based on evidence learned by detectives, and the self-defense aspects of this incident, the citizen was released on scene,” the release said.

The department did not mention it in the release but identified the ex-officer as Kerry Ruesch, according to dispatch records released to the Review-Journal.

Ruesch served 34 years as an officer with the police department before retiring in 2013 and received a pension payment of $118,000 in 2022, according to the public pay data base TransparentNevada.com.

Robert Hoy, a one-time contract worker for the CIA, had gone to the Walmart at Arroyo Market Square on that November day to pick up his wife’s drug prescriptions and two steak sandwiches for their lunch before he was shot, Kathleen Hoy said.

She said her husband suffered from “extreme neuropathy” — pain from nerve damage in his legs — that made it difficult to walk and so he would park in spaces reserved for the handicapped located near the Walmart’s pharmacy.

But when she arrived at the scene of the shooting, his car was parked in a different part of the lot far away from the handicapped spaces, she said.

“It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “The thing I want to know is what the argument was about and why did it escalate.”

Her daughter remains very upset about losing her father, Kathleen Hoy said.

“This stuff has been running in my mind every night, and every morning I think about it,” she said.

She said her life is now centered solely on her daughter’s well-being.

“This is all about her,” she said.

Contact Jeff Burbank at jburbank@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0382. Follow him @JeffBurbank2 on X.