Texas couple charged in rampage

Newlyweds awaiting extradition to Nevada

Formal charges, including murder, have been filed in Nevada against a newlywed couple who authorities say carried out a two-state shooting spree alongside a family member on Thanksgiving Day.

Shawn Mcdonnell, 30, and Kayleigh Lewis, 25, were charged Monday in Henderson Justice Court, records show. They are awaiting extradition to Nevada, where they will join Mcdonnell’s younger brother, Christopher, who has been in Henderson police custody since the trio’s arrests on Thanksgiving Day in rural Arizona.

Authorities have linked the trio from Tyler, Texas, to at least 11 shootings and the beating of a woman with a baseball bat between Southern Nevada and Bouse, Arizona. Their rampage began 37 minutes into Thanksgiving Day just outside Las Vegas city limits in Henderson, according to police records, and ended 11 hours later after a police chase and a rollover crash and after Shawn Mcdonnell was struck by Arizona police gunfire.

The suspects were separated after their capture. Christopher Mcdonnell, 28, was flown to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center in Las Vegas for injuries he suffered in the crash, while his brother and sister-in-law were hospitalized in Arizona, where they initially were charged. But on Friday, Clark County District Attorney

Steve Wolfson told the Las Vegas Review-journal that his office would take the lead in prosecuting the trio.

Each faces 20 felony counts, from open murder and attempted murder to discharging a firearm into a vehicle and battery with a deadly weapon, according to the records. The Clark County district attorney’s office also has said it is pursuing possible terrorism and hate crime charges against the trio. If convicted of murder, they could be sentenced to life in prison or

ing,” Smith said.

Chattah said the Las Vegas church has a capacity of 700 people, while attorney David Cortman, who represents the Lyon County church, said the capacity there was 200 people.

“A casino can still have hundreds or thousands of people,” Cortman argued. “So the differential treatment is that there’s a percentage basis, but there’s a hard cap for churches but no hard cap with any of the other uses.”

Nevada’s houses of worship reopened in the spring after Sisolak limited attendance to 50 people with social distancing, while allowing casinos and other businesses to operate at 50 percent of normal capacity. Public gatherings were temporarily allowed to increase to 250 people, but last month, Sisolak issued another directive that limited capacity to 50 people, or 25 percent at restaurants, bars, gyms and other businesses.

In June, U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware denied a request from Calvary Chapel to reopen at 50 percent capacity. The church appealed to the 9th Circuit, which is based in San Francisco, arguing that the restrictions on religious gatherings violated church members’ First Amendment rights.

One of the judges, Danny Boggs, sitting in from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio, asked Cortman the types of limitations to which the church could agree.

The attorney said the church should be allowed 50 percent capacity per

room, not strictly the entire building.

“We are not challenging any of the mask wearing, distancing, hand sanitizing. I want to make that clear,” Cortman said. “The church is only challenging the numerical limit. …

You have movie theaters, you have schools that are allowed that cap per room, whereas the church is only allowed that cap for one part of their building.”

The hearing came just after the

U.S. Supreme Court late last month blocked pandemic restrictions on houses of worship in New York and later ordered judges in California to do the same.

Judges in Tuesday’s hearing recognized that reversal from a July decision when the high court decided to permit capacity limits on churches in California and Nevada.

“When you begin with a regulation that names houses of worship as a particular category and come up with different numbers, rather than saying houses of worship are like something else, how can you say it’s neutral or generally applicable?” Boggs asked.

Newby responded that other provisions had limited occupancy to 50 people in theaters, art galleries and some schools.

“Simply naming religious services does not in and of itself make the provision not generally applicable,” Newby said. “These directives are intended to be guidance to the general public, so they understand what they can and can’t do during this pandemic.”