Victim devoted to family

Karen Zekan

Friday, Aug. 9, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Mark Emerson's wife was asleep the morning of her birthday last month as he quietly scrambled about the house to get her surprises ready.

He wrapped up three bottles of perfume -- one to be from him, the others from the children. He'd also saved enough money for his wife, Marla, to buy the set of dishes she'd been wanting.

But it was the next surprise that was truly from his heart. He placed a note on the stereo knowing Marla would see it when she awoke. It told her to press the tape deck's play button.

"Have I told you lately that I love you," she would later hear Emerson sing, his voice soothing the tones of a song so special to the couple.

Music meant everything to Emerson. And Emerson meant the world to his family.

Thursday afternoon, the family cat lay on the kitchen table next to a blue folder from Palm Mortuary. One month after hearing her husband's voice on the stereo a few feet away, Marla Emerson now must plan his funeral.

The family has had little sleep in the past 36 hours since Mark Emerson was savagely murdered on his back porch. He was clutching the family's white cordless phone at 11 p.m. Wednesday when it happened, rushing to tell 911 dispatchers about the crazed gunman blasting away in his neighborhood.

The next thing he knew, the gunman and an accomplice were walking past the porch. One of them popped off a high-powered assault rifle, striking Emerson in the chest. He died later at University Medical Center.

Terror reigned over the 800 block of Mantis Way, near Pecos Road and Washington Avenue, for the next three hours as Metro Police patrolmen, detectives, K-9 teams and SWAT officers swarmed the neighborhood. One officer caught in the crossfire dodged a storm of bullets. Residents were evacuated from their homes during an intensive search for the gunmen.

Daymomashell Aguilar, 31, was taken into custody shortly after Emerson was hit and remains without bail in the Clark County Detention Center on a charge of murder with a deadly weapon.

Police are still looking for Gilbert Aguilar, 28, the suspect's brother who is also believed to have been involved in the shooting. He is described as Hispanic, 6 feet, 200 pounds and may live in the Washington-Pecos area where the shooting occurred, apparently in retaliation for a fight shortly before 11 p.m. at a convenience store in the same intersection.

His eyes reddened with tears, 12-year-old Mark Emerson Jr. was mere inches from his father when he fell to the ground. Through sobs he tells a sequence of events that a child shouldn't have had to suffer through.

He saw the bald head of the gunman that shot his father; his 3-year-old sister, Corrin, was at her brother's side.

"That's where daddy was," the little girl said, looking up at her grandmother as she held her hand Thursday. "He was lying on the ground."

"She's too young to know what it all means," said Harriet Flaggard, Emerson's mother-in-law. "Mark was killed trying to protect his family."

Emerson grew up in Las Vegas as one of seven children, attending Ronnow Elementary School and Rancho High School. Outside of a devotion to the Mormon church, it was music that held his fascination.

"Mark taught himself to play the guitar," remembered his mother, Helen Emerson. "He was in kindergarten. He'd go to bed playing his guitar at night. As he grew up, music became his way of communicating. It's a universal language that everyone can understand, but Mark's love of music was so deep you could feel it. He could reach out to you."

A floor manager for the Las Vegas Hilton, Emerson was one year from retirement after a 20-year career when he was killed. In the family living room stands a golden trophy his band won during an employee benefit contest at the Hilton, a proud moment when he was able to merge his hobby with his job.

Emerson had been the singer for the local group Thin Ice until the drummer was killed in a car accident and another singer developed throat cancer, Flaggard said. He recently had joined a new jazz band to continue his hobby.

"Mark's mom taught Mark Jr. to play the piano," Flaggard said. "Mark's dream was that one day he and his son would be able to sing and play together professionally. That will never happen now."

Marla Emerson was hesitant to talk about her husband, shell-shocked after a television reporter came into her home early Thursday asking the family to re-enact the frantic moments during and after the terrifying shooting the night before.

"We have been hoping to move out of here because of the crime," the young woman said. In the past nine months, they've had two cars stolen outside their home and two weeks ago a replacement car was smashed by an uninsured motorist.

The family believes Emerson may have been walking out to check on a used minivan they bought a few days ago when the gunman shot him. He was fatally wounded a few feet from the van's grill.

The neighborhood remains on edge, knowing the second gunman still could be in their neighborhood. Disturbing to the Emersons is the thought that Mark's killer may have little remorse.

"The world needs more people like Mark," his mother said, hugging Flaggard for support. "That garbage comes along and snuffs him out."