A 29-year-old Las Vegas man drove himself to a police substation on September 1 and told officers he had just shot his girlfriend and her two children inside their apartment, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Officers who responded to the address found all three victims dead.
Police say Juan Orona arrived at the Southeast Area Command shortly after 7 p.m. and reported the shooting, then directed officers to an apartment in the 5100 block of O’Bannon Drive in the Spring Valley area. There, officers found a woman in her 40s, a teenage girl and a boy under the age of 10, all dead from gunshot wounds.
What investigators have said
Metro homicide detectives say Orona fired at least ten shots inside the residence. He was also found to have a gunshot wound to his abdomen and was taken to a hospital for treatment of what police described as a non-life-threatening injury. Police have said the children are believed to be the victim’s, not the suspect’s, and that the case is being investigated as domestic violence-related.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confirmed the deaths in a press release and said Orona is expected to face multiple counts of murder once he is medically cleared and booked into custody. As of this week, police had not released the identities of the victims pending family notification.
A department already under strain
The killings add to what has been a violent stretch for the Las Vegas valley; local outlets have separately reported several unrelated homicide investigations opening in the city within the same week, including a fatal shooting in east Las Vegas that led to a 76-year-old suspect’s arrest on September 3. Metro has not indicated any connection between that case and the Spring Valley killings.
Source reporting: Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and KTNV Las Vegas.
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