Cab crashes after being hijacked

Eric Leake

Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2005 | 9:41 a.m.

A man hijacked and later crashed a taxi cab Tuesday night, just hours before a separate cab robbery spurred a standoff at a Las Vegas apartment complex, Metro Police said.

Brent Stowell, 33, was arrested after the carjacking. Police said he had hailed a cab downtown and traveled to a shopping center at Bonanza Road and Pecos Road shortly before 8 p.m., Metro Police Lt. Chris Carroll said. Once there Stowell allegedly fought with the driver for control of the cab.

"They had a fight in the car. The fight spilled to the parking lot outside the cab," Carroll said.

The driver was sprayed with pepper spray and drove away in the cab, Carroll said.

But Stowell went only about 50 yards before driving the cab off the road and running into a poll, Carroll said. A security guard at the shopping center saw what was happening and watched Stowell try to hide in an unlocked, unoccupied Chevy Suburban.

When Stowell tried to run from his hiding place the security guard grabbed him. Stowell then was arrested by police, Carroll said.

The driver, whom Carroll was unable to identify, was treated for exposure to pepper spray.

A second robbery overnight began when two men approached another taxi near Fort Apache Road just after midnight, Metro Lt. Craig Klatt said.

The two men, whose names were not released this morning, approached the cab with handguns and made off in a blue Chevy sedan with an undisclosed amount of money, he said.

The cab driver then followed the two men to an apartment complex near Fort Apache and Tropicana, where they entered an apartment believed to belong to a girlfriend of one of the men.

The incident led to a brief standoff after officers arrived and the woman would not allow them to enter her home without a search warrant. Several children were reportedly in the apartment at the time.

Once the warrant was obtained the officers entered the apartment and arrested the two men about 4:35 this morning, Klatt said.

No one was injured in the incident.

Sun reporter Stephen Curran contributed to this story.