Thursday, April 11, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
The search continued today for a man police have accused of slitting his neighbor's throat in a savage ending to a drug-related lover's triangle.
Manuel Pedroso, 27, allegedly stabbed the 32-year-old man numerous times in the chest before slicing open his neck on the second-floor balcony of the Stewart Arms Apartments at North 11th Street and Stewart Avenue.
Drugs and the victim's common-law wife were at the heart of the fight that started about 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Metro Police homicide Lt. Larry Spinosa said.
The victim, whose name has been withheld until his family can be notified, had confronted Pedroso about the affair, triggering the assault.
Police have learned that the wife exchanged sex for drugs, Sgt. Bill Keeton said.
"Her husband found out about it and he confronted the man," he said.
Police didn't say what type of knife was used or if they had found it. But they said Pedroso ran to his apartment after the attack, washed the blood from his arms and tore out of the parking lot in a 1983 medium-blue Cadillac, Nevada license plate number 638GBG.
Another man, Ariel Martinez, was in the car with Pedroso when he left, police say.
Their status as Cuban immigrants has peaked detectives' interest -- Wednesday's slaying was the third in three days involving citizens who have recently relocated here from Cuba.
"We're investigating that angle to see if there is indeed a connection," Spinosa said. "We're not sure if these Cubans knew each other."
On Monday, 40-year-old Vincente Garcia was killed and 36-year-old Barbaro Gener was injured while standing with friends in the 800 block of Bridger Avenue when an unknown man walked up and started firing a handgun at the men whom police said were Cuban.
On Tuesday, Livan Rodriguez Perez, 18, was stabbed to death in an alley south of West Cincinnati Avenue, near Las Vegas Boulevard South and Sahara Avenue. Perez also was identified as a Cuban.
Detectives have not determined a motive for Tuesday's killing, but the attacks on Monday and Wednesday happened in notorious drug-infested neighborhoods a few blocks apart, Spinosa said.
"They're at it all day long," said one Stewart Arms resident, forced to wait outside her apartment until police pulled back their ring of yellow crime tape.
"There's lots of Cubans living in there and there's lots of drugs," the woman said. "They bang on my door all night long, the drug dealers, trying to sell stuff, trying to buy stuff. The police come by and arrest them, but they're right back here in no time."
The single mother said she moved in thinking the building would be safer after her last apartment a few blocks away was burglarized. She can't afford to live outside the decaying neighborhood, she said, and is trying to save money to get out.
"But where's it going to end?" she asked, looking up to the landing at the victim's bloody body atop the stairs. She then looked down around her feet at the parking lot's freshly painted yellow curbs and stripes.
"They try to fix this place by painting the lot. I'd rather have a safe place for my child to live," she said. "(Management) knows where the rent money's coming from, they know these people are paying with drug money, and still they shut their eyes."
archive
