Man killed in apartment by downtown high school

A man was killed in an early morning shooting Thursday inside an apartment across from a high school in downtown Las Vegas, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.

At about 6:50 a.m., police dispatchers received calls about multiple gunshots heard in the 400 block of 10th Street near Lewis

Avenue, and witnesses told police they saw a man firing a gun in the area, police Lt. Bill Giblin said at a news conference near the scene.

“Officers were able to locate that subject matching the description provided by witnesses by an adjacent apartment,” Giblin said. “That subject was detained.”

When officers conducted a welfare check inside the apartment, they found a man suffering from a gunshot wound to the head, and he was pronounced dead at the scene, Giblin said.

A man taken into custody is considered a person of interest in the homicide investigation, which was in its preliminary stages, Giblin said.

The shooting took place across the street from the Black Box Theater on the campus of the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts, a Clark County School District secondary school at 315 7th Street.

As is standard protocol, police contacted the school district which had the school locked down temporarily, he said.

Giblin said that police do not believe the school was a target in the shooting.

The victim’s body was found inside the living room of the apartment, he said.

Although police had yet to establish a motive, Giblin said the shooting was “not a random act,” he said.

Police put up crime scene tape across both sides of 10th between Lewis and East Clark Avenue to prevent traffic near the crime scene and expected to continue to block traffic there for several hours, he said.