News briefs

Thursday, March 2, 2000 | 11:46 a.m.

Suspect arrested shortly after crime

A 34-year-old Las Vegas man was charged Wednesday in connection with the robbery of a Wells Fargo bank branch.

Terrance J. Denton is accused of going into the bank at 6110 W. Cheyenne Ave. about 4:30 p.m. with what turned out to be a pellet gun at his side. He demanded money from the teller and fled with an undisclosed amount of cash, FBI officials said.

A Metro Police patrol officer pulled over Denton's car shortly after the robbery and took him into custody. Cash and a pellet gun were found in the car, FBI officials said.

Denton was to have a hearing in front of a federal magistrate this afternoon, FBI officials said.

The robber had the weapon at his side when he walked into the back, but FBI officials were unsure if he threatened the teller with the pellet gun.

Police capture California fugitive

A 22-year-old man broke his ankle jumping out of a two-story building trying to escape from criminal apprehension team detectives Monday, police said.

Mario Herrera was caught and taken to University Medical Center before heading off to the Clark County Detention Center on a parole-violation warrant issued by the Northern California Youth Authority, police said.

Local detectives received information that Herrera was in an apartment complex in the 6600 block of West Washington Avenue. As detectives went up to an apartment unit Monday about 9:45 a.m., Herrera jumped from the window, police said.

18-year-old man pleads guilty in death

An 18-year-old Las Vegas man who accidentally shot and killed his roommate at the end of January pleaded guilty Wednesday to involuntary manslaughter with a deadly weapon.

Brandon Von Bellamy could get probation or as much as six years in prison for the death of Robert Howington when District Judge Kathy Hardcastle sentences him on May 2.

Deputy District Attorney Lisa Luzaich has said that a police investigation found that Von Bellamy believed his shotgun was empty as he played with it in a room at the Warren Motel Apartments on the south end of the Strip. The gun went off and the 21-year-old roommate was killed.

Nevada delegation stages counterattack

Nevada's two representatives in the House introduced a bill Wednesday designed as a counterattack to a bill that would ban bettors in Nevada casinos from placing wagers on college games.

"This bill is the perfect alternative to the Graham-Roemer bill that attacks Nevada's legal gaming industry," Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., the bill's chief sponsor, said today. "Our bill goes to the real problem of NCAA betting, the illegal bets made on college sports games."

Four college betting bills are now pending in Congress. One bill in the Senate and one in the House, both heavily backed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, are aimed at banning college bets made in Nevada sports books.

Sponsors say the bills would eliminate game-fixing and gambling schemes.

The Gibbons and Berkley bill is similar to one introduced in the Senate by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., which calls for a yearlong federal study of illegal gambling on college sports. The attorney general would oversee the study, which would be presented to Congress.

Hearing officer upholds suspension

A state hearing officer in Carson City has upheld a 10-day suspension for a correctional officer at the Southern Desert Correction Center who was caught with his shirt off and with a pillow and bedsheet nearby while in a tower guard post in January 1999.

Hearing officer Daniel Hussey said in a decision released Wednesday that the evidence showed Officer Erik Castillo was asleep in the tower, which "constitutes an egregious and inexcusable neglect of duty and endangered the security of the prison as inmates could have escaped, thereby endangering the public."

Castillo, who has worked for the prison near Indian Springs since 1997, was found by another officer in the tower. Castillo was wearing only his uniform pants and T-shirt. The uniform coat was spread on the floor like a sheet, and a sheet and pillowcase had been stuffed into a duffel bag.

Castillo maintained he used the pillow to ease his back pain from an accident and that the sheet is needed to cover the ground when he works on his motorcycle when it breaks down. The hearing officer said "the use of the bedsheet and pillow with case indicate pre-planning."

LV man faces federal charges

Two landowners are accused in a Tucson, Ariz., federal court of blading archaeological ruins and desert vegetation on federal land in order to make their own land more valuable.

Charges against Lane H. Holmes, 38, of Las Vegas and Timothy R. Blowers, 48, of Tucson allege they caused $1 million in damage by illegally blading eight miles of dirt roads near Green Valley and Sahuarita, Ariz., between March 1997 and June 1998.

The U.S. attorney's office said Wednesday they were arrested last week and were released on their own recognizance.

The ruins are in the Indian Kitchen area, where the Hohokam tribe once grew crops and processed food, the indictment said.

Blowers, who calls himself an "environmentally friendly wildcat subdivider," pleaded innocent, contending an 1866 law allowed for the creation of such roads on federal land. He said he was only grading and maintaining existing roads.

Holmes couldn't be reached.