Police identify officers, release footage in shooting of burglary suspect
Las Vegas police on Thursday released body camera footage and identified two officers who shot and killed a suspected burglar in an upscale southwest valley neighborhood early Tuesday morning.
Malik Grego-Smith, 40, and and Dustin Xaypanya, 25, each fired three shots that fatally struck Nathaniel Sironen, 40, after a report of a burglary at 1:20 a.m. on the 5100 block of Spanish Heights Drive, near Tropicana Avenue and the 215 Beltway.
One of the homeowners called police after her home alarm went off and told police a man with a hammer was in her home, Assistant Sheriff Brett Zimmerman said Thursday afternoon.
Officers saw the man inside the couple’s kitchen and when they entered through the front door, Sironen held a hammer over his head and toward the male homeowner. Both officers fired while within 6 feet of Sironen, Zimmerman said.
Body camera footage from the shooting shows the officers entering the front door and then one yells, “No no no, stop stop stop” before firing three shots.
Sironen died at the scene from multiple gunshot wounds, the Clark County coroner’s office said. His death was ruled a homicide.
“We always teach our officers to pre-plan when they’re out there,” Zimmerman said. “All of a sudden the game plan changes because they look in and they see an individual inside of the residence armed with a hammer and holding a homeowner hostage. They have to act quickly.”
Zimmerman said the homeowners told police Sironen had threatened to take their car keys and drive away with the woman.
Investigators believe that the man had been reported at a construction site nearby earlier that night and that he entered the couple’s home through a door to the garage, which connected to the house, police said.
“These guys have to act immediately and to do what they did in that short of an amount of time, these guys are heroes.” Zimmerman said of the officers. “From what they see and what they have out there, seeing a hammer being raised above a person’s head and these homeowners, one was 73 and one was 68-years-old. They’re basically being terrorized in their own home.”
Grego-Smith has worked for Metro since 2008, and Xaypanya has been employed since 2018. Both are assigned to the Summerlin area command’s community policing division, police said.
The officers were placed on paid administrative leave while the department investigates the shooting.
Sironen’s death marked the 18th police shooting involving Metro officers this year and the 10th fatal shooting, according to records maintained by the Review-Journal.
“We don’t like getting into officer-involved shootings, but that’s part of our job and it’s our last resort,” Zimmerman said. “We take the sanctity of life seriously but in that sort of instance, in that close range, it’s pretty much one of their only options.”
Zimmerman said the Clark County district attorney told police Sironen had previously stolen items from a business in May and was released from jail on credit for time served while awaiting trial.
Sironen had a prior conviction for petty larceny stemming from the May charge, according to Las Vegas Justice Court records. He was also convicted in September of destroying the property of another, between $25 and $250. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail, impulse control counseling and a restitution of $8,000 to the district attorney’s bad check unit.
Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter. Review-Journal reporter Katelyn Newberg contributed to this report.