Woman owing city fines on property has a theory on curious fire

By Sam Skolnik

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Dedra Edmond has long dreamed of rebuilding on the West Las Vegas site on which her pioneering grandfather, beginning in the early 1940s, built a house, a malt shop and a small hotel.

But first she has to untangle the lien placed on her property by Las Vegas, the result of a record number of code violations — and potential fines — because of chronic neglect.

The property had become such a nuisance, the city tore down the three buildings on the site last year.

But her problems began before that. Three years ago a mysterious fire damaged the old family home.

She claims, without proof, that the fire was set deliberately after her property was used as a backdrop for the cover photo of a CD by a local rapper who later killed Metro Police Sgt. Henry Prendes.

The fire badly damaged the house on 418 Jackson Ave. on Feb. 7, 2006. It was the very day that Prendes, the first Metro officer to be killed in the line of duty since 1988, was buried.

According to Edmond, the timing suggests that law enforcers, or their supporters, might have torched her house as a symbolic act of revenge against the rapper, Amir Crump.

An arson investigation discounted Edmond’s theory, and the city, which holds the lien on the property, is set to take it over if she doesn’t pay off her debt in the next couple of years.

The cause of the blaze has remained a mystery. City arson investigators labeled it “undetermined.”

Edmond, a Las Vegas native and Strip blackjack dealer, says she suffered a nervous breakdown last year because of lingering stress over the incident.

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Prendes was ambushed and shot to death Feb. 1, 2006, by Crump at a Spring Valley home after responding to a call that a man there was assaulting his girlfriend.

Crump, 21, a rapper who performed under the name “Trajik,” fired more than 40 rounds during the shootout with police before he was killed.

The following week, as police were conducting a full-dress funeral for Prendes, 911 dispatchers were taking calls about a fire at 418 Jackson.

Crump’s group, Desert Mobb, had taken photographs on that property to use for the cover of their CD. Edmond and Crump’s rap partner, Ernest King, say that Crump had no connection to the Edmond family.

King said the two were looking for a cover photo that represented a part of Las Vegas that was as far away as possible from the glamour of the Strip. The Edmond property, not far from where King’s mother lived in the historically black and poor neighborhood of West Las Vegas, fit the bill, he said.

“We just hopped the fence and took about 10 photos” before leaving.

King said he was watching Prendes’ funeral on television when he heard a helicopter flying above. He looked outside and saw smoke from the Jackson Avenue fire.

“It was kind of awkward,” he said. “I felt in my heart that maybe it did have something to do with the officer’s funeral.”

A month after the shooting, then-Sheriff Bill Young said: “The gentleman who killed Sgt. Prendes clearly had a gangsta rap album out. He had on the cover of that album a picture of himself looking out a window with an AK-47. Looking and waiting.”

The photo Young was referring to was in the CD’s liner notes, not the cover photo of the Jackson Avenue property. Nevertheless, the theory that police believed the Jackson Avenue property was connected to Crump and burned it down as an act of retaliation was mentioned at some length – and ultimately rejected – in the city fire department’s arson report. The theory had first been raised by Crump’s family and friends.

“This fire occurred on the same day as the officer’s funeral. There is no evidence at this time that indicates that this is an arson fire and that this fire was ignited for symbolism of this prior Metro event that resulted in the two deaths,” the fire department report concluded.

Investigators said blame for the blaze likely lay with transients who smoked cigarettes and possibly processed drugs over an open flame inside the burned building. But they did not search for accelerants by using a specially trained dog. A city spokeswoman said in a statement that investigators concluded that fire patterns at the scene did not dictate the use of a dog.

Edmond said that she doesn’t know for certain who set the blaze, but the coincidence is difficult to ignore. She thinks the fire-starters were police officers or their supporters — and that their misplaced payback has taken a toll on innocent people.

“Someone lashed out at the wrong person, and now a whole other family is hurting,” she said.

Metro spokesman John Loretto said of Edmond’s speculation: “We’re not going to add any credibility to the story, so we’re not going to participate.”

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Code enforcement officers had told Edmond a month before the fire to clean up her property, which was attracting vagrants and litter.

The site had become dangerous and the situation untenable, Neighborhood Response Division Manager Devin Smith said. After 44 inspections, city officials last year ordered the three buildings on the site demolished.

According to Smith, Edmond had long been unresponsive to officials’ concerns. “We couldn’t get her to react,” he said.

Edmond, 44, who said she has tried to get a loan to restore the property and otherwise did what she could to maintain it, said she still would like to revitalize the site, perhaps by opening a mini-mall including a restaurant.

The house on the property – the building that caught fire – was built by her grandfather, Clay Jeffery Johnson in the early 1940s, after Johnson moved from Texas to find work.

Johnson, who Edmond said was the first black skycap at McCarran International Airport, also opened a popular restaurant on the site – Johnson’s Malt Shop – and later became a pastor.

The City Council has cut the potential fines she owes on the property from $426,550 to $12,974. Still, Edmond said she doesn’t know when she’ll be able to pay the city’s bill. But she’s trying to think beyond that.

“I have to go ahead and finish what he started,” Edmond said of her grandfather. “It’s about what happened to the property my grandfather built.”