LAS VEGAS (AP) — A man who opened fire at an apartment complex near Las Vegas, killing five people and injuring a 13-year-old girl, was banned from owning a firearm because of prior felony convictions, court records show.
The suspect, Eric Adams, later shot and killed himself as North Las Vegas police officers confronted him.
Police said Adams used a handgun in the shootings Monday night but they were still investigating how he obtained the weapon. Nevada law prohibits people with felony convictions from owning or possessing a gun.
“Adams should have never been in possession of a firearm,” police spokesperson Brian Thomas said.
Adams was visiting his former girlfriend in a ground-floor apartment when they began arguing and Adams shot the woman’s 24-year-old daughter and her girlfriend, killing them both. He then fatally shot a neighbor, a 20-year-old man, who had come from his second-floor apartment to help, police said.
After shooting the neighbor, police said Adams went into the upstairs unit and again opened fire, killing the neighbor’s grandmother and mother and critically wounding his teen sister.
Adams then “took his ex-girlfriend hostage” and fled in a vehicle, according to the police department. The woman was able to escape in the early-morning hours and flag down a police officer for help.
Just after 10 a.m. Tuesday, police learned that the suspect had been seen at a business in North Las Vegas, and as officers arrived in the area, they saw the suspect with a firearm, running into the backyard of a nearby home.
Officers followed Adams, but he refused to drop his weapon and died by suicide, police said.
The Clark County coroner’s office said Adams was 48 at the time of his death, not 47 as initially reported by the police department.
Since at least 1994, Adams had been convicted in Clark County for violent felony crimes, including battery, domestic battery and battery on a police officer, according to court records.
More recently, Adams was arrested in February by North Las Vegas police on suspicion of domestic battery by strangulation. The court record shows that the case was dismissed because the victim wasn’t cooperating with authorities.
Michael Hyte, a public defender who briefly represented Adams in the case, said Thursday that he had no comment.
The coroner’s office has identified the 24-year-old victim as Kayla Harris and the two women killed in the upstairs unit as Damiana Moreno, 59, and Amy Damian, 40. Late Thursday, police said the coroner had identified another victim as Jeannette Faria-Webster, 22, but didn’t release any additional details. The name of the other victim hasn’t been released.
Harris played college basketball at Adams State University in southern Colorado, where she was working on a master’s degree in business administration, said David Tandberg, the university’s president.
In a statement, Tandberg called it a privilege “to watch Kayla excel on and off the court.”
“It feels nearly impossible to understand and cope with losing a young woman so early in her promising life,” he said.
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