Police shoot, kill man after malt liquor theft

Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2003 | 10:58 a.m.

A man accused of stealing a bottle of Olde English 800 malt liquor from a Las Vegas convenience store was shot by two Metro Police officers after he allegedly lunged at them with a knife at Desert Breeze Park on Monday.

The man, Charles M. Rorie III, 21, of Las Vegas was taken to University Medical Center, where he died at 2:52 a.m. today, authorities said. "He elevated the event from a simple shoplifting to a robbery with a knife," Metro Capt. Tom Lozich said of the incident that began about 5:30 p.m. in a Chevron convenience store at the corner of Durango Drive and Spring Mountain Road.

It ended moments later across the street in the park, where two Metro officers working another incident saw Rorie staggering across Durango.

When Rorie raised a knife, police ordered him to stop again and again, witnesses said. When Rorie lunged at the officers, they each fired at least once, Lozich said.

The names of the two officers were withheld for 48 hours according to police department policy, and they were put on paid administrative leave.

"Why would you risk your life for a $1.35 bottle of beer?" Austin Keaveny, 22, wondered after witnessing the shooting with his brother, William.

The brothers said the clerk on duty was their friend and they spotted Rorie through the store's windows as he grabbed the clerk's wrist and shoved him at one point.

The police had no choice in their actions, the brothers said.

"He just wouldn't stop and they kept screaming at him," Austin Keaveny said. "They had no other choice."

The brothers said they were standing on the sidewalk and watched Rorie leave the store and cross Durango.

"He almost got run over," William Keaveny, 23, a member of the National Guard, said.

No one else was at the western edge of the park at the time of the shooting. Usually the park is full of children and soccer players at dusk, witnesses said.

"It's something you don't want to see twice," Keaveny said.

Witnesses Eric Ellson and his fiancee, Ranie Bradish, said they will never forget the shooting.

As Ellson was walking out of McDonald's, he said, he saw a man carrying a knife clenched in his fist with the blade against his forearm.

"It was an eight-inch serrated bread knife, like anyone has in their kitchens," said Ellson, 28, a clerk at Home Depot. "There was mud all over his pants, and I said, 'This guy's drunk.'

"The man walks out of the store and he has this knife and he collapses near my Jeep."

Rorie got up and staggered down the block to Twain Avenue, then tried to cross Durango, witnesses said.

"The police yelled, 'Stop, drop your weapon,' " Ellson said. "He had fair warning; they yelled at him a million times."

Ellson, who is from Colorado Springs, Colo., said his main concern in Colorado was just angry bears.

"It's crazy here, on the other hand," he said. "It's Vegas.

"Those cops have families and they are between us and them. They are the thin blue line."

Bradish, 21, said she was horrified by the shooting, however, and hoped Rorie lived.

Lydia Martin, who walking her dog in the park almost two hours after the shooting, said the news came as a shock.

Six months ago she moved to Las Vegas from Stockton, Calif., after her husband died.

"It occurred to me not to walk in the park after dark," Martin said. "Maybe in a year I'll move to Paris, France."