Officer, suspect in east valley shooting named
Man accused of firing gun, charging at police
The police officer and suspect involved in a shooting during a domestic dispute in the eastern Las Vegas Valley have been identified.
On Oct. 11, Metropolitan Police Department officer Julien Pappas, 28, shot Vaughan C. Morrill on the 100 block of Moonlight Drive. Police said then that Morrill was shot in the abdomen as he charged at officers while holding a Smith & Wesson replica BB gun and shouting, “Die.”
Pappas fired five rounds and hit Morrill once.
Police identified Morrill as the 35-year-old suspect shot by Pappas. After undergoing surgery at University Medical Center, Morrill was booked into the Clark County Detention Center, where he is being held without bail.
Metro Capt. Kelly Mcmahill said the dispute began when a woman told police that her boyfriend had beaten her. Officers couldn’t find the man when they arrived on Moonlight Drive and helped the woman retrieve her belongings from inside the home she shared with the man. The suspect was not inside when officers entered the home, police said.
But Mcmahill said the suspect spoke to the officers through a Ring doorbell, which allows a person to answer the door from anywhere with a smartphone. During the conversation, the man had made comments that were “derogatory toward the police officers, and he did threaten to murder the police officers more than once.”
While the police were inside, the man arrived at the home and crashedhispickupintothebackof an unoccupied squad car, and then shot the car several times with the BB gun, Mcmahill said.
As emergency responders were taking him to the hospital, Morrill punched a Las Vegas Fire Department firefighter in the face, thinking the firefighter was an officer, police said.
About a half-hour before Morrill was shot, he posted an anti-police and federal government status on Facebook and said goodbye to “all the good people left.”
Pappas, who joined Metro in November 2014 and is assigned to the department’s northeast area command, has been placed on routine paid administrative leave pending the outcome of a review of the incident.
Morrill is due in court Oct. 23 for his felony arraignment. He is facing charges including battery, assault on a protected person with a deadly weapon and coercion with force.
This is the 19th officer-involved shooting and the 11th nonfatal shooting this year. This time last year, there were six police shootings, four of which were nonfatal.
Contact Rio Lacanlale at rlacanlale@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @riolacanlale on Twitter. Review-journal staff writer Blake Apgar contributed to this story.