Suspect in 1-year-old boy’s death arrested
Las Vegas police on Wednesday arrested a Georgia man suspected in the death of his girlfriend’s 1-year-old son.
Antonio Bridges, 34, is facing one count each of first-degree murder and child abuse or neglect resulting in substantial bodily harm in the death of Mark Phillips Jr., who died Sunday of multiple blunt force injuries at University Medical Center. The baby’s death has been ruled a homicide by the Clark County coroner’s office.
Bridges had recently moved from Georgia to Las Vegas, according to police.
Mark was hospitalized three days earlier on April 12 with critical injuries. It wasn’t known where the alleged beating had happened, but police said Mark was under Bridges’ sole care while his mother was being treated at UMC for unrelated medical reasons.
Bridges tried to leave the hospital after dropping off the unresponsive boy, but he was stopped by a Metropolitan Police Department traffic officer who was at the hospital for an unrelated call.
When Bridges was detained, according to police spokeswoman Laura Meltzer, the suspect gave the officer a fake name.
“Buttheofficerfiguredoutwhohe was,” Meltzer said.
A records check revealed that Bridges had a fugitive warrant out for his arrest from Georgia. It wasn’t immediately clear what charges he was facing.
Police booked Bridges into the Clark County Detention Center the sameday,buthewaslaterreleased from custody after law enforcement officials in Georgia declined to extradite him.
Three days after the 1-year-old died from his injuries, Bridges was again taken into custody at the hospital.
No other details were available Friday as Bridges’ arrest report had not been released.
He is scheduled to appear in court Monday morning, jail records show.
The baby’s death marked the 69th homicide in Clark County this year and the fifth child death investigated by Metro, according to Las Vegas Review-journal records.
Contact Rio Lacanlale at rlacanlale@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @riolacanlale on Twitter.
A former Las Vegas real estate agent was indicted this week on tax and bank fraud charges.
William Waller faces charges of tax evasion, attempting to interfere with internal revenue laws, making a false statement on a loan application to a bank and failure to file tax returns, according to the indictment.
The Wednesday indictment accuses Waller of evading more than $500,000 in taxes owed from 2004-09, according to a U.S. Department of Justice release. Waller had third parties pay nominee entities for services he provided, the release said, and he used bank accounts under the nominees’ names to pay personal expenses.
Waller also misrepresented his employment and income status to a bank in an attempt to obtain a loan modification, the release said.