Police: Man assaulted, shot woman
The man who ransacked an 80-year-old woman’s house was halfway out the door when he turned around and pointed her gun right at her forehead — right between her eyes — and pulled the trigger.
The woman, Shevaun, said she must have jerked her head at the last minute, surviving the gunshot wound to her head. She said she lay on the ground as her assailant walked out of her front door Sunday morning with many of her valuables, including a silver bracelet, a strand of 84 pearls and her favorite Navajo bracelet.
He re-entered the home as if he forgot something, but Shevaun continued to lie on the floor until he left.
“I wasn’t scared,” the former antiques dealer said during a Thursday night phone interview. “I just kept thinking I don’t wanna die this way. I can’t die this way.”
Shevaun, who asked not to give her last name over safety concerns, said she was beaten, shot and nearly raped Sunday morning inside of her home on the 1400 block of Francis Avenue, near Maryland Parkway and Charleston Boulevard. While the gunshot wound and the bruises on her face, neck and arms will take a while to heal, she has been released from the hospital.
But she hasn’t returned to her house since the encounter, which began when she woke up about 8 a.m. Sunday to the sound of her dishes rattling. She spotted a man wearing nothing but a baseball cap at her front door.
“What are you doing?” Shevaun recalled asking the man.
ARREST
“This was not about the number of tickets we wrote,” Raybuck said. “This was about the communication and message that we sent to this community that we can no longer have a culture that accepts illegal fireworks as part of the Fourth of July.”
County firefighters responded to 405 fire-related calls on Wednesday night, Wildermuth said. Inside city limits, the Las Vegas Fire Department responded to an additional
173 calls, spokesman Tim Szymanski said. That was more than double the number of calls received on July 4 last year.
“It was the worst I’ve seen it in 21 years,” Szymanski said. “It was wallto-wall fireworks.”
One man was taken to University Medical Center after he was burned by fireworks in a desert area outside the city, but Szymanski said the majority of fire calls in the department’s jurisdiction did not result in significant injuries or damage.
There will never be enough police to enforce illegal-firework laws, Raybuck said. Instead, he said, the responsibility will rest heavily on residents who participate in the act.
“I think everybody looked at the skies last night and recognized there is a problem in our community,” he said. “A significant problem with illegal fireworks, and we need to come together to change it.”
The fireworks that are illegal in Clark County can be purchased just over the Nye County border, in Pahrump.
At a cluster of stores including Red Apple Fireworks, colorful explosives are sold in bulk with names like Giant Panda. Customers are warned about the safety risks, which are printed along with instructions on each product.
They are also encouraged to buy permits to launch the fireworks at the Pahrump Fairgrounds Launch Site, owner Douglas Burda said.
“We do feel some pressure from neighboring counties,” said Burda, who said he helped work with the county to create the designated shooting site. “It’s never been our intention to upset our neighbors.”
But sometimes, like on Thursday, he sees some of the store’s fireworks were confiscated in Las Vegas.
“We always remind the customers to be cognizant of the regulations that apply to their final destination,” Burda said. “We do everything we can to make sure a customer uses the product in a safe and legal way, but we can’t follow them out of the store, back to their house, to make sure they’re in a legal jurisdiction.”
Contact Michael Scott Davidson at sdavidson@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861. Follow @davidsonlvrj on Twitter. Contact Max Michor at mmichor@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-6239. Follow @Maxmichor on Twitter. Contact Briana Erickson at berickson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5244. Follow @brianarerick on Twitter.