Suspect in downtown stabbing beat inmate, police say
A transient accused of an unprovoked stabbing at the Fremont Street Experience is suspected of severely beating a fellow inmate at the Clark County Detention Center over the weekend, leaving the victim critically injured, Las Vegas police said.
Officer Larry Hadfield said a corrections officer at the jail was conducting a walk-through of a module Sunday when the officer “observed an inmate inside of a cell who appeared unresponsive.”
“Corrections officers entered the cell and detained his cellmate, and the injured inmate was transported to (University Medical Center) Trauma in critical condition,” Hadfield said in an email.
The injured inmate’s name was not released, but the severity of his injuries led police to call homicide detectives. Hadfield said those detectives determined the victim’s cellmate, Steven Revell, was responsible for the attack.
Revell, 39, who is homeless, was in custody on suspicion of attempted murder in the Dec. 5 stabbing of a Nebraska man on the 400 block of Fremont Street.
In the stabbing, an arrest report for Revell indicates, the victim was in town to work a job, and he and his co-workers went to the Fremont Street Experience to have drinks. The man said he became separated from his friends, so he briefly stopped at Fremont and Fourth Street to call his acquaintances on the phone.
“While stopped he heard some pounding (like running) behind him, and then he felt pain in his back,” the arrest report said.
The assailant stabbed the victim three times in the back with a knife, inflicting wounds up to 1-inch deep. The Nebraska man survived the attack.
Police said video surveillance helped them identify Revell as a suspect. He was arrested less than an hour later in the area. Police said Revell confessed to the stabbing and claimed to know the victim, but police said there was no indication that was the case.
“I stabbed him as much as I could,” Revell told police, according to the report.
Police said Revell said in his statement “I tried to get him good, near the spine.”
A knife was recovered at the scene of the crime.
Revell was booked at the jail in the stabbing on suspicion of attempted murder and battery with use of a deadly weapon causing substantial bodily harm and possession of schedule 1 narcotics (heroin). He also was being held at the jail on a fugitive warrant from another state.
Hadfield said Tuesday that Revell has been booked on additional count of attempted murder in Sunday’s beating of his cellmate.