A fight turned into a shooting at the end of First Friday in downtown Las Vegas, and one teenager is dead. Three people in their late teens were shot near Charleston Boulevard and Main Street around 10:17 p.m. Friday, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police said. One died at the hospital. The other two have injuries that aren’t life-threatening.
Police detained several people, but as of Saturday morning they hadn’t announced an arrest or named the shooter.
What happened at First Friday in Las Vegas?
First Friday is the monthly arts and culture festival in the 18b Arts District. It draws big crowds of locals to downtown. Metro had officers assigned to patrol it, and they ran toward the gunfire when they heard it.
Lt. Robert Price described what investigators believe happened at a briefing early Saturday:
It appears there was a group of individuals that got into a physical altercation. During that physical altercation, one individual pulls out a firearm, starts shooting into the crowd and ends up hitting three of the individuals in the altercation.
Lt. Robert Price, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
Price said investigators didn’t have any information pointing to a gang link. Road closures stretched from Third Street to Grand Central Parkway overnight, and the Interstate 15 ramps at Charleston were shut for a time.
Did First Friday have extra security?
Yes. Price said the event is “always one of the top priorities” for Metro and gets extra officers “above and beyond the normal area command officers to prevent any type of violence like this.” The shooting still happened within earshot of those officers.
Organizers posted early Saturday that they were “heartbroken” and that the shooting happened “in the vicinity of the event in its last minutes.” They said they’d decide on “the most thorough and appropriate response possible” before planning or announcing any future events. That leaves next month’s First Friday an open question.
How can you help the investigation?
Price asked anyone with information or video from the scene to contact Metro homicide detectives or Crime Stoppers. In a crowd that size, a lot of people had their phones out.
Our homicide detectives are the best in the world and we’ll meticulously go through all the video and the information, and speaking to the individuals that we have stopped at this time, I believe we’ll be able to bring this to a resolution.
Lt. Robert Price
It was the second time Friday night that teenagers were shot leaving a crowded weekend event. A few hours earlier in Indianapolis, two kids were shot in the parking lot after a high school football game in Indianapolis.
The BeezLoop Take
Police did a lot right here. Officers were already on site, they got to the victims fast, and they detained people at the scene. That’s what extra patrols are for. It still wasn’t enough to stop one teenager from pulling a gun during a fistfight.
That’s the hard truth in both Friday shootings. Las Vegas put extra officers on First Friday, and Indianapolis had school police at the game. Neither could stop a teenager who showed up armed and got into a fight. Security can shorten the response. It can’t undo the decision to bring the gun.
Federal law already bars licensed dealers from selling a handgun to anyone under 21 and generally bars anyone under 18 from having one. So the question isn’t only about crowd control at festivals. It’s how kids keep ending up armed at them.
What we’re watching: whether First Friday’s organizers change the event’s hours, entry or footprint, and whether police name a suspect from all that video.
Also on BeezLoop: Twelve teenagers were shot at a Macon park.
Sources: Las Vegas Review-Journal · KTNV Channel 13 · 8 News Now
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