Death of Metro officer is 3rd shooting involving police this week
The fatal shooting of a Las Vegas police officer Thursday was the third shooting involving police in Clark County this week.
On Monday, North Las Vegas police fatally shot a man who they say was wearing a Michael Myers-style mask and pulling a gun on people near the Martin Luther King Jr. statue.
While police didn’t identify the man who was killed, saying the Clark County coroner’s office would do so, the man’s mother and others identified him as Christopher Smith.
The next day, a man was shot at by Henderson police after a report of a family disturbance. Police initially said the man, identified as 19-year-old Mark Ellsworth, had exchanged gunfire with officers, but the arrest report indicated that Ellsworth had pointed a long gun at four officers without firing the weapon.
Then Thursday morning, Officer Truong Thai, 49, died at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center from a gunshot wound to the torso. He had been with the Metropolitan Police Department since 1999.
Officers were initially called around 1 a.m. to South University Center Drive and East Flamingo Road after a report of a domestic disturbance, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said at a news conference Thursday morning.
Thai and another officer found a suspect who was involved in the disturbance driving nearby, but when they attempted to arrest the man, he opened fire, striking Thai and a civilian, the sheriff said.
Lombardo said Thai and another officer shot back, and Tyson Hampton, 24, was arrested near South Eastern Avenue and East Desert Inn Road with minor injuries.
The other civilian was hospitalized with injuries that were not considered life-threatening.
It was Metro’s 10th officer-involved shooting of 2022.
The last Metro officer to die in the line of duty was Detective Justin Terry, 45, who was killed in June when a large steel beam fell onto U.S. Highway 95 and crushed the unmarked police vehicle he was driving.
The last Las Vegas police officer killed by gunfire was Officer Charleston Hartfield, who was shot and killed Oct. 1, 2017 by a gunman who opened fire from a high-rise hotel into an open-air concert crowd. Hartfield was attending the concert.
