LAS VEGAS (AP) - Dramatic witness videotape shows federal land management rangers and a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper scuffled with a 20-year-old man before he was shot dead during a confrontation on a road outside Las Vegas.
The cellphone video recording, posted by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, shows a man trying to open the door of an NHP vehicle before he is shot and killed about noon Friday on State Route 159 near Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. Authorities identified the man as D’Andre Berghardt Jr. of Los Angeles.
“Dude, they just shot him. They just killed the dude,” says a voice on the video that the newspaper said was enhanced for clarity before it was posted Monday on the newspaper website. (https://bit.ly/1j8KRFE ).
A man who said Tuesday that he shot the video refused to allow his name to be used by The Associated Press. He told the Review-Journal he would make the video available to Las Vegas police investigating the shooting.
About 10 apparent gunshots can be heard at a crucial point of the nearly seven-minute recording taken through the windshield of a vehicle in a row of cars stopped in the westbound lanes more than 50 feet back on the two-lane highway.
The scuffle evolves slowly, with two Bureau of Land Management rangers confronting Berghardt standing in the highway and one apparently squirting Berghardt with pepper spray with little apparent effect.
It does not appear that Berghardt had a weapon.
As the NHP trooper arrives in an SUV, Berghardt darts toward a row of cars facing eastbound toward the camera. He is followed by the officers.
The video cuts away and resumes with Berghardt on the pavement before he struggles to his feet and bolts toward the NHP vehicle.
David Reed, 61, a Colorado resident in another vehicle, told the Review-Journal the highway patrol trooper used a Taser stun gun on Berghardt before Berghardt tried to open the locked driver’s door of the NHP patrol vehicle and was shot.
“They were yelling at him to show them his hands, to stop,” Reed told the newspaper.
It wasn’t immediately clear which officers fired their weapons. The officers weren’t identified, and BLM spokeswoman Hillerie Patton didn’t immediately respond to questions about whether they were at work on Tuesday.
Highway Patrol officials did not immediately respond to messages.
The Clark County coroner said Berghardt died of multiple gunshot wounds. The death was ruled a homicide.
Bicyclists and joggers told reporters that Berghardt had been seen walking on the paved shoulder of the highway with a rolling suitcase, a backpack and a bedroll.
NHP Trooper Loy Hixson said Friday that the confrontation began after the BLM rangers and the trooper were called to a report of a man attacking bicyclists.
Hixson said the officers weren’t hurt.
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Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, https://www.lvrj.com
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