Details emerge about three deaths

Timothy Pratt and Mary Manning

Friday, Sept. 26, 2003 | 11:06 a.m.

Details about the three people killed in an apparent love triangle gone wrong began to emerge Thursday from police, fellow workers and neighbors.

Tommie Neal apparently shot and killed his wife Barbara A. Neal, 52, at their home near Washington Avenue and Buffalo Drive, then went to the Clark County Water Reclamation District Headquarters, 5857 E. Flamingo Road, where he shot his wife's co-worker, Alexis Rodriguez, then killed himself Thursday morning, authorities said.

A revolver was found outside the district building, near the two dead men after the 7:30 a.m. shooting, police said.

The license plate of a car next to the bodies led authorities to the Neals' home in the 8000 block of Rio de Janeiro Drive in northwest Las Vegas, where Barbara Neal's body was found.

Metro Lt. Tom Monahan said the deaths apparently were "the tragic result of a love triangle. The victims appeared to be engaged in some kind of affair."

Marty Flynn, spokesman for the reclamation district, said Barbara Neal worked for two years in the district's purchasing department, and Rodriguez was an electrical engineer who had worked for the district for 10 years.

The 220 employees at the district "are in various stages of shock and grief. We're like a big family. It's overwhelming," Flynn said Thursday.

Clark County Manager Thom Reilly said grief counselors were dispatched to the building to offer assistance to employees.

The district building reopened to the public at 8 a.m. today.

Police had Neal's block cordoned off all morning Thursday.

Derrick Russell, who up to three weeks ago lived across the street from the Neals said her husband was much older than she was. Russell said he believed Tommie Neal was in his 70s.

"He was much older than her," he said.

Russell said he used a walker because he had been in a car accident several years ago.

"They really kept to themselves," he said.

Russell said he had known people in the neighborhood since 1995 -- before he moved to the area -- and saw the couple move to their house around that time.

The only police record of a possible problem at the Neals' home was a 911 hang-up call in 2001, and when police arrived there was no one at the home, Sgt. Rick Barela said.

Gabrielle Pruitt lives in the 8000 block of Rio de Janeiro and drove up on the crime investigation Thursday when she returned to the neighborhood after dropping her three children off at school.

"I thought the neighborhood was safe enough to let children out after school," she said.

"But you just never know where something like this might happen," she said.

Pruitt, who said she didn't know Neal or the man Neal lived with, but said the neighborhood had seen "a lot of coming and going in recent months."

Jose Corominas, who lives in the 900 block of Matagordas Lane, the next street east of Rio de Janeiro, said he had never seen anyone come in or out of Neal's house in the three months he had lived in the neighborhood.

"It's surprising that this would happen so close," he said.

"But I suppose things like this happen everywhere in the world."