Las Vegas Review-Journal

Report: Witnesses put woman at crime scene

- By Mike Shoro Las Vegas Review-journal

First came the screams.

Then one witness watched a woman wearing a backpack and a white shirt stroll out of a women’s restroom Thursday afternoon at West Flamingo Park, 6225 W. Flamingo Road.

“(The witness) said she walked casually west across the grass and started running when she got to Fairbanks Road,” an arrest report released Tuesday said.

Witnesses directed Las Vegas police to the nearby neighborho­od, where they found Liliani Pinto, 33, in a vacant house often used by squatters. Metropolit­an Police Department homicide detectives found a backpack holding a large knife wrapped in a bloody white T-shirt and several ID cards under Pinto’s name, the report said. She also had blood on her shoes.

Paramedics responding to the park found Marilyn Allweiss, 27, with stab wounds in a bathroom stall. They removed her from the stall but were unable to revive her. The coroner’s office ruled her death a homicide, and police arrested Pinto on a murder charge.

With the bloodied evidence, witness accounts and descriptio­ns helped police identify Pinto as the suspect in Allweiss’ killing. Homicide Lt. Ray Spencer said the two women might have been homeless.

One witness told Metro she rode her bicycle into the women’s restroom and recognized somebody she knew, whose name was redacted from the report. She said hello and walked toward the last stall in the bathroom.

She passed one stall with a woman standing inside and facing out, and the woman “motioned to (the witness) to keep quiet,” the report said.

While in a different stall, the witness “heard what sounded like a door being kicked and then heard (the person she recognized) screaming, ‘I don’t have your s---,’ ” the report states. The witness then ran from the bathroom.

Pinto talked to detectives but gave varying accounts of where she was at the time and details of what she saw, the report states.

They didn’t buy her story.

“Pinto provided several different accounts of where she was going and where she was coming from during the interview,” according to the report.

Pinto first told police she was not at the park Thursday but changed her story after police told her that witnesses had placed her there.

 ??  ?? Liliani Pinto
Liliani Pinto

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