LAS VEGAS (AP) - Police tried using a stun gun and beanbag shotgun projectiles before shooting a knife-wielding man accused of stabbing a woman on a bus and another on a Las Vegas sidewalk, authorities said.
Caleb Hill, 38, was hospitalized Monday with gunshot wounds and will face charges of attempted murder and resisting arrest with a weapon in the attacks Friday, Clark County Assistant Sheriff Tim Kelly told reporters.
The women, whose names were not released, were expected to recover, he said.
“The officers tried to de-escalate, they went through proper protocol,” Kelly said before airing video from the officers’ body-worn cameras and characterizing the stabbings as “unprovoked.”
The video showed officers following a man wearing a backpack away from the bus where the first stabbing occurred and ordering him to drop his knife as he jogged along a sidewalk several miles west of the Las Vegas Strip.
“His intentions were to hurt people,” Kelly said, noting that the women had no interaction with Hill before the attacks.
The veteran officers, Keith Hannof and Beaumont Hopson, “went through low-lethal options, they used verbal commands, they did everything they could to try to prevent from using deadly force,” Kelly said.
Stun gun darts hit Hill’s backpack and five shotgun projectiles that Hopson fired from close range had no effect, authorities said. Hannof fired three gunshots as Hill approached people at a bus stop, Kelly said.
Both officers are on paid leave pending reviews by the department and prosecutors.
Kelly said Hill is a convicted felon with arrests dating to 1998 and three drug-related convictions in 2012. Records show he served time in Nevada prison.
Las Vegas police have been involved in 18 shootings in 2018, including nine fatal cases. That compares with 16 shootings at the same time in 2017, seven of them fatal.
The 18th case was Saturday, when 18-year-old Roosevelt Brown was killed by a police SWAT officer after refusing to drop a gun that authorities said he fired twice in an argument at home and pointed at himself and others in a neighborhood near downtown Las Vegas.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.