Man fatally stabbed outside store

Friday, Dec. 17, 2004 | 9:51 a.m.

A 19-year-old Las Vegas man is charged with stabbing a 27-year-old man to death outside a northeast Las Vegas Wal-Mart store Thursday night, Metro Police said.

About 10 p.m., Lauriano Ruiz had a "chance encounter" with the victim in the parking lot of the store at Nellis Boulevard and Craig Road, Sgt. Ken Hefner said. The two argued, began fighting and then the victim was stabbed repeatedly, police said.

The victim, whose name had not been released this morning, was taken to University Medical Center where he later died.

Police said the suspect fled. Witnesses gave police descriptions of the man and the vehicle, and a patrol officer spotted the car near the Wal-Mart at Nellis Boulevard and Gowan Road, police said.

A man ran from the car when the officer pulled it over, but the other occupants of the car gave police Ruiz's address. Detectives tracked him down a few hours later at his family's home in the 4300 block of Puebla Street, in the same neighborhood as the stabbing, and arrested him on a murder charge.

The incident was not the first time violence started in a local Wal-Mart. In October, a woman was stabbed and wounded outside a store at Tropicana Avenue and Mojave Road. According to police, the assailant followed the woman to her parked car and stabbed her.

Security personnel took the man believed to have stabbed her into custody.

Also in October, another Wal-Mart parking lot, on Rainbow Boulevard near Cheyenne Avenue, was the scene of an attempted murder and suicide.

In that case a woman's ex-husband had been stalking her and shot at her when she came out of the store, then he took his own life, police said. The woman was wounded but survived.

Four months earlier, in June, a man was changing a headlight on his car in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart at Charleston and Nellis boulevards when a man beat him and stole his money, police said.

The victim was on life support but died a few days later and the attacker was charged with murder.