Las Vegas news briefs

Wednesday, March 31, 1999 | 11:45 a.m.

Autopsies have determined that two women slain in a Jones Boulevard apartment died from stab wounds, the Clark County coroner's office reported.

The bodies of Diane L. Paynes, 58, and Evangeline C. Lee, 72, were found in their bedrooms by Paynes' son March 23 when Payne failed to show up for work and did not answer her phone at home.

Metro Police Homicide Lt. Wayne Petersen said Lee's grandson, Ronald Calvin, 20, had been sharing their three-bedroom apartment.

Calvin was arrested Friday in Fresno, Calif., where he had been treated at a hospital for a knife cut on his hand.

Mental illness plea lessens sentence

A Las Vegas man who pleaded guilty but mentally ill for the murder of another man on Feb. 11, 1997, was given the lightest possible sentence on Tuesday of 50 years in prison by District Judge Jeff Sobel.

Tony Trabert still will have to serve 20 years behind bars before he is eligible for parole for the stabbing death of 40-year-old Steven Gentis near the intersection of Bonanza Road and Martin Luther King Boulevard.

Court documents state that Trabert was mentally ill at the time of the slaying and continues to suffer from mental illness.

DA calls killing gang retaliation

An admitted gang member has pleaded guilty to murder and conspiracy charges in a killing which prosecutors say apparently was retaliation for a shooting the week before.

In Tuesday's plea bargain, Enrique Perez agreed to a sentence that will keep him in prison for 28 years before he will be eligible for parole. Formal sentencing on the charges, which carry a maximum punishment of life plus 20 years, will be on May 10.

Perez admitted gunning down Alejandro Nieve on June 18 outside an apartment on Silver Dollar Avenue in a plot to benefit his gang.

Deputy District Attorney Phil Brown said a member of Perez's gang was shot but not killed a week before the Nieve murder.

Truck burglar caught by home's camera

Metro Police are searching the valley for a beer-bellied man with a receding hairline who was caught on videotape allegedly burglarizing a Las Vegas resident's vehicle.

The man police are looking for is believed to be white and between 30 and 40 years old. Detectives are working with images of the thief recorded by a wireless receiver hidden on the victim's property in the 6000 block of East Stewart Avenue.

Police said the victim had set up the recording devices after his home was broken into several times. The tape captured an image of the suspect hopping a rear fence, breaking into the 1974 Ford flatbed truck and stealing the camera.

Anyone with information on the crime is asked to call Metro's burglary section at 229-3573 or Secret Witness at 385-5555.