Fred Gates’ mistake was that he made it known that he had goods in his possession. That he had guns. He advertised them, in fact. Guns for sale. His murderer took him up on it. On a Saturday.
June 23, a little after 6 p.m., to be more exact. Came in. Robbed Mr. Gates, a limo driver. Not just his guns, but also some jewelry from a locked safe. Then shot him, dead.
Right there inside Mr. Gates’ house, on the 2400 block of Anglia Street. Just east of Sahara Avenue and Nellis Boulevard. With its peace sign painted large and unavoidable on the garage. Mr. Gates was 54 years old. His assailant is at large.
Kenneth Spitzno-Daley wanted in connection with the murder of Fred Gates
The other victims, in what police call a “crime wave” that has surged through the Las Vegas Valley this past month, composed of robberies for the most part, were more or less random.
Victims like Rachel Liga, 42, who was with a friend chatting in the garage of her home on the 6400 block of Eldorado Lane, by Jones Boulevard, between Robindale and Warm Springs Roads, when a boy who looked a third her age came rising up her driveway with a gun and stole her purse before rushing on. It was a Tuesday. June 12. About 5 p.m. And her assailant, allegedly, was one of three robbers—all young, all male, all (again, allegedly) members of a trio of gangs responsible for more than a dozen June robberies, police say—who swept through southwest Las Vegas on that day. They had swept through the Rain Tree Village condos, on the 7500 block of Flamingo Road and Tenaya Way, where they pistol-whipped a 75-year-old Korean War veteran for all he had, which was nothing, and then, minutes later, robbed Ivstvan Csiki, 35, of his cell phone and wallet and the $400 in cash in it, shooting once but hitting no one.
They swept through the 7600 block of Jones Boulevard, too. That’s where they robbed Nicole Cruz, 42, of her cell phone and wallet, firing off one round into her car’s tire.
The suspects—19, 17, and a boy 14 years old—are now in custody, after a televised police chase climaxed in their arrests.
Three days earlier, there was Josephine Muscolo.
Making her way in the middle of the night to the 7-Eleven convenience store on West Lake Mead Boulevard and Simmons Street, 75 years old, the grandmother of five and mom of three. Restricted to a motorized wheelchair to get around. “A woman who was defenseless and could not protect herself,” says North Las Vegas police, who responded to the early-morning robbery. “Someone chose to victimize her.”
Someone who is yet at large, having beaten and robbed Mrs. Muscolo. It took all she had left to make it into the 7-Eleven and tell what had happened to her. Then she lost consciousness and never woke.
The robberies started prior to June. In 2005, there were 2,395 of them after the first half of the year. And thousands and thousands, and thousands, before that, in prior years. But it wasn’t until two tourists from California—a man and a woman: a couple: both 62—got robbed, and beaten, and one died, that folks here started to take notice of the outbreak of robberies in the Valley this incipient summer.
That was the early morning of May 29, about 2:30. Out in front of the Tahiti Vacation Club, near Tropicana Avenue and Decatur Boulevard. Two assailants, both male. They fled in a green car.
People around the Valley are on edge. What are they to do? “You can say whatever you want to assure people they’re safe,” says Harry Mortenson, a Democratic assemblyman whose district, in southwest Vegas, has suffered multiple robberies this month. “But if they are not in fact safe, you’re doing them a disservice.”
He says that most government entities, like the Legislature, act without variance in a reactionary way. Stricter penalties for robbery offenders. More deterrents. Things like that. But it’s proactive measures, he says, which are going to prevent robberies in the community before they even occur.
In the meantime, he says, cheer on Metro, who according to recent reports have enhanced their preemptive actions against deviants. “I do believe we are getting smarter,” says Mortenson. “The stats reflect that. Robberies are down from last year, I’m told.”
That’s correct. Despite the “crime wave” rolling across the evening news every night and splashed on the front page of the newspaper each morning, robberies, year to date, are down 3.8 percent.
Nevertheless, says Metro’s Jose Montoya, the thing to do now is practice caution. At all times. “These individuals look for easy victims,” the officer says. “People who aren’t paying attention, who aren’t alert.
“So the first thing I’d tell people who are afraid is, be aware of your surroundings.
“If something doesn’t feel right, get away.”
And if approached by a robber?
“First thing I’d advise,” says Montoya, “is to cooperate. No amount of property is worth putting your life in danger.”