Prints on canned cocktail recovered at shooting scene leads to arrest

Las Vegas police say fingerprints lifted from a Smirnoff Ice Smash can have led to an arrest in a west Las Vegas shooting during a possible car burglary.

Mark Hooper, 48, of Las Vegas, is charged with attempted murder in the April 1 shooting in the 3900 block of Starfield Lane, near South Fort Apache Road and West Katie Avenue.

Police said a man who lives at a home on Starfield noticed an individual slip through a community pedestrian gate in his neighborhood about 9:42 p.m. and began hovering around a parked car while holding a can of Smirnoff Ice Smash. The owner of the car, believing his car was being burglarized, approached the person and was shot twice. The car owner was critically injured but survived.

Police said in an arrest report that the gunman dropped the can of Smirnoff Ice when he opened fire. Police recovered the can and found two fingerprints on it. Those prints, police said in the report, were entered into a national fingerprint database and came back as a match for Hooper. Police said they then searched Hooper’s residence, finding ammunition that matched shell casings recovered from the crime scene.

Hooper is also charged with possession of a gun by a prohibited person. He remained in custody at the Clark County Detention Center on Monday morning.

Contact Glenn Puit by email at gpuit@reviewjournal.com. Follow @GlennatRJ on Twitter.