Vigil held for man slain by officer

Jace Radke

Thursday, May 27, 1999 | 11:28 a.m.

Thirty-three crosses staked in a vacant lot took the place of 33 candles as friends and family of John Perrin held a vigil on what would have been his birthday Wednesday night.

About 50 people gathered in the dusty lot on Rainbow Boulevard just south of Tropicana Avenue where Perrin was shot to death by a Metro Police officer on the night of April 12.

"Today would have been my son's 33rd birthday, so it's difficult for me to speak," John's mother, Connie Perrin, said. "This isn't just about him though. It's about Riverside (Calif.) and New York and anywhere else that there has been police brutality.

"We're here because something has to change."

The Perrin family's lawyers, Las Vegas attorney Brent Bryson and California civil rights lawyer John Burris, have filed a $25 million wrongful death lawsuit against Metro after a coroner's inquest exonerated Officer Bruce Gentner of any wrongdoing in the shooting.

"What should be painfully obvious to the community is that it still does not know what happened that night," said Gary Peck, executive director of the Nevada branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. "The coroner's inquest is a sham that allows officers to give their version of events which go unchallenged, and are taken for the truth."

Six of seven jurors declared Perrin's death was justifiable at the May 7 inquest.

Gentner, 27, testified that he believed Perrin was a drug dealer who was reaching for a gun in his waistband in the dimly lit lot. Gentner fired 14 shots, with six bullets striking Perrin, who didn't have a gun, but did have a jar containing a chemical used to manufacture methamphetamine.

Perrin's cousin, Lisa Funkhouser, urged those at the vigil to remember her cousin and to make themselves heard in their displeasure with the coroner's inquest procedure.

"We all want to see justice, and we ask the community to write letters to their representatives and congressmen and let them know that this process has to change," Funkhouser said.

One man at the vigil, who would not comment or identify himself, walked back and forth in front of the memorial site with a sign that read, "LVMPD is not the enemy drugs are."

During the vigil a Metro officer pulled a car over for a traffic stop on the west side of Rainbow, across from the vigil, and was greeted with comments of, "Don't shoot him" from some of the mourners.