Man who died lay on sidewalk half-hour before any 911 call

A man lay on a sidewalk, alone and bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds, for at least a half-hour Friday before someone called police. By then it was too late.

“There were neighbors who did hear gunshots, but there were no calls to police at that time,” Metropolitan Police Department homicide Lt. Ray Spencer said at the scene on the 1100 block of Newport Street, a neighborhood near East Washington Avenue and North Pecos Road. “Anytime you hear gunshots in your neighborhood, reach out and call police.”

The first gunshot was heard as early as 7:40 a.m., police said, but the first and only 911 call reporting the shooting came at 8:11 a.m., when a person driving through the neighborhood saw the man in his late 20s lying on a sidewalk. He was pronounced dead at the scene, Spencer said during a news briefing, standing about 100 feet from the spot where the man was found.

A little more than an hour after the shooting, a couple shuffled two children wearing backpacks into a white minivan outside their home, which sat at the heart of the crime scene. On either side of their one-story house was yellow crime tape.

Little was known about what led up to the shooting. No witnesses had come forward, Spencer said, and surveillance cameras in the area did not capture the shooting.

Spencer said it also was too early to say whether the killing was a random act of violence, but he said the victim did not have any known gang ties.

The man did not live in the neighborhood, and detectives were still working to determine why he was there.

Anyone with information is asked to call Metro’s homicide unit at 702828-3521 or Crime Stoppers at 702385-5555 to remain anonymous.

The man will be identified by the Clark County coroner’s office after his family has been notified of his death, which marked the 12th homicide in Clark County this year and the seventh investigated by Metro, according to Review-Journal records.