Two young men hurt in possible gang-related shooting

Karen Zekan

Tuesday, Dec. 2, 1997 | 10:48 a.m.

Word spread among bystanders Monday night that two men who were shot and critically wounded in a Las Vegas parking lot were victims of an ongoing gang fight.

Yet Metro Police said that the crime could just as easily have been drug related.

"It's still just speculation at this point," said Detective Guy Cunningham. "Until we can talk to the victims after they come out of surgery, it's all speculation."

The victims, identified only as two men in their 20s, were operated on late Monday at University Medical Center after being taken there by paramedics minutes after the 6:10 p.m. shooting in the southwest parking lot off Jackson Avenue and F Street. A nursing supervisor said both were in critical condition.

The men were apparently standing in the dimly lit lot when a gunman popped off what witnesses remembered as at least 15 rounds from inside a dark-colored Geo Metro.

Three Metro bike officers working regular patrol in the blighted and drug-plagued neighborhood heard the shots and took off toward the gunfire. A sedan in the lot, its lights on and engine running, caught their suspicions, Cunningham said.

"The officers stopped and were approaching the vehicle with guns drawn when it took off out of the parking lot, westbound on Jackson," Cunningham said. "When the car cleared, the officers saw the two victims."

Bloodied and collapsed in the lot littered with broken bottles, the men appeared to have been shot while on the driver's side of the gunman's east-facing car, Cunningham said.

One was hit once in the chest and the other as many as six times, police said.

"When the suspect took off, the officers saw one of the victims trying to shoot back at the car," Cunningham said. "(The officers) kept their guns on him and told him to put down his weapon."

The bike officers got a quick glance at the car's plate and radioed dispatchers with a description of the dark-colored vehicle with the numbers "999" on the license.

Shortly after the shooting, police found a car parked about four blocks away that matched the description and impounded it. Officers were attempting overnight to contact its registered owner.

Cunningham said neither weapons or drugs were recovered from the car.

"It was ugly, very ugly," said a young man identifying himself only as Holliday. "I was across the street when the fellas rolled up and shot at the other fellas. I covered, and made sure everyone else around me was safe. I heard more shots and stayed down, and then I saw the two fellas shot in the lot."

The shooting, Holliday said, was just a part of "the game," or drugs, as others gathered near the crime scene explained.

"Living in this neighborhood, these are the kind of things that happen," Holliday said. "It sounded like they emptied a whole clip -- 17, 18, 19 rounds, consecutively. It happens."

The parking lot where the shooting happened is considered amongst gangs in the area as neutral territory, a local said. Police said the spot is known for drug transactions.

Yet several people in the crowd of onlookers Monday night said the shooting was in retaliation for a fight last week between gangs, which left one gang member dead. Another gang member was shot a few days afterward but survived. A woman was shot in the leg over the weekend, with street sources saying the shot was fired in retaliation and meant for someone else.

"Right now, it's eye-for-an-eye," a bystander said, requesting anonymity. "One of theirs was killed, so now one of (their rivals) must die. And until they actually kill someone and even the score, these shootings are gonna continue."

Witnesses said a verbal fight had been going on in the lot at F and Jackson a half hour before Monday's shooting, and that the same car involved in the shooting had circled the neighborhood minutes before the gunman pulled into the lot and fired.

Police did not confirm witnesses' statements, and declined to comment on any relationship between Monday's parking lot shooting with the previous homicide or supposed ongoing gang fight until after further investigation.