Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

Woman shot dead by Henderson police

A woman whom Henderson Police said pointed a sawed-off shotgun at four officers was shot dead Tuesday night on Sunset Road, police said.

The four officers have been placed on administrative leave while department officials investigate the incident. Henderson Police haven't been involved in a fatal shooting since January 2004.

At 7:40 p.m. Tuesday a caller from Midway Trailer Park at 125 Merlayne Drive., near Sunset and Boulder Highway, reported to police that someone had fired a gun, police spokesman, Officer Todd Rasmussen, said.

"A woman was seen leaving the area with a shotgun," Rasmussen said.

Police began searching for the woman, then they received a second call at 8:20 p.m. from a witness who saw the woman walking west on Sunset near Burns Road. Police found her in that area.

"She had a shotgun in her hand. She raised the sawed-off shotgun. All four of the officers fired their weapons, killing her," Rasmussen said. The woman was shot near the Desert Sands RV Park on East Sunset and Burns Avenue.

The coroner's office did not release the woman's name this morning.

The names of the officers involved, a sergeant and three patrol officers, will be released 48 hours after the shooting, Rasmussen said. A coroner's inquest has not yet been scheduled.

No one else was injured in the shooting.

Nearby residents said they didn't see much but heard the shots.

"I thought I heard something like somebody shooting fireworks," Desert Sands resident Ryan Klingensmith said. "I heard maybe five or six pops and thought maybe somebody was starting an early Fourth of July.

"I'm from Iowa and I'm not used to this."

One Midway Trailer Park resident, Jeff Wilham, said he heard a possible gunshot.

"I heard a loud noise," Wilham said. "Then every Henderson cop in town responded."

There were police at a trailer parked in space 27, which had broken windows.

Wilham said he lived a few doors away from that trailer, but did not know who lived there.

Michael Haas, who lives three lots down from space 27 with his mother, said he met a woman named Susan who had been staying at the trailer. Neighbors said they believed that she was the woman police shot down the road.

Haas said she came to his trailer Saturday, he gave her a cup of coffee and they talked.

Haas said she told him she moved from Illinois after an abusive relationship ended in divorce and came to Las Vegas six weeks ago to be close to a friend.

He said she had been staying at the trailer with a man, whom he didn't know, and said other than that she was "basically homeless."

She told him she didn't have enough money for a motel, Haas said, and she had been selling cartons of cigarettes trying to make money.

He said she had told him that "her husband used to beat her and he used coke. She got enough courage to divorce him and moved here. She seemed stable. She seemed nice."

The last police shooting in Henderson was in the parking lot of Fay Galloway Elementary School on Jan 21, 2004.

Hezekiah Lewis, 40, apparently motivated by jealousy, shot 35-year-old Anthony Jackson as he sat in a car. Lewis was killed by police after a standoff that ended in gunfire when Lewis pointed a gun at an officer.

archive