Two sought in murder of LV man

Karen Zekan

Monday, Dec. 22, 1997 | 10:48 a.m.

A 23-year-old Las Vegas man was shot and killed Sunday outside of his apartment complex laundry room. Two suspects in the slaying remain at large.

Metro Police have not determined why the victim was a target in the slaying, which occurred between the La Villita and Royal Orleans apartment buildings in the 1600 block of East University Avenue near Caliente Street.

Police said one of the suspected killers is a Hispanic male, 5 feet 4 inches tall, about 25 years old and 150 pounds. He was wearing a dark leather jacket, police said.

Police described the second suspect as a Hispanic male, 5 feet 3 inches tall, about 30 years old and 140 pounds. Police said he was wearing a brown, flannel shirt.

The victim's girlfriend told police her boyfriend left his ground-floor La Villita apartment about 5:50 p.m. to smoke a cigarette when two men knocked on the door looking for him.

"A few minutes later she heard a gunshot and ran out and found her boyfriend in the alley," said homicide Lt. Wayne Petersen.

The man was found face down on the pavement with a single gunshot wound to the head.

Petersen said the woman saw a yellow minivan leaving the alley and remembered it as the same vehicle belonging to the two men who earlier had been looking for her boyfriend.

"I wouldn't call them friends," Petersen said of the relationship between the killers and their victim, whose name has been withheld until relatives are notified. "They definitely knew each other, though."

Firefighters found the van ablaze off Boulder Highway about an hour after the shooting.

Anyone with information should call the homicide section at 229-3521. Anonymous tips can be phoned in to Secret Witness at 385-5555.