LAS VEGAS (AP) - A 44-year-old man who was shot and killed by Las Vegas police during the weekend refused orders at gunpoint to drop what turned out to be a homemade plastic device that he called a sword, a police official said Tuesday.
Lloyd Napouk may have had what Assistant Clark County Sheriff Charles Hank characterized for reporters as mental concerns before police were called early Saturday to a report of a man with a machete approaching vehicles and going door-to-door in a residential neighborhood south of the Las Vegas Strip.
Body-worn camera video from Sgt. Buford Kenton and Officer Cameran Gunn showed Napouk wearing sunglasses, earphones and a baseball cap - talking to himself and refusing several minutes of requests and commands to put down the mock weapon.
“What’s in your hand?” an officer asks. “Put it on the ground.”
Later, he says, “Just drop it, man. I don’t want to shoot you today.”
The officers fired seven shots when Napouk began walking toward Kenton. Napouk was pronounced dead at the scene.
Napouk turned out to have been wielding a duct-taped piece of plastic with a handle, Hank said.
Napouk used to live in Washington state and Anchorage, Alaska, where Hank said he had convictions on felony drunken driving and misdemeanor reckless endangerment charges. Hank said he didn’t know how long Napouk lived in Las Vegas.
Hank said Napouk didn’t live in the neighborhood where Hank said he arrived on a bicycle before residents called police.
Kenton, 36, has been a Las Vegas police officer for 13 years. Gunn, 29, has been an officer for a year. Both are on paid leave pending departmental and district attorney reviews.
The shooting was the 21st involving Las Vegas police in 2018, Hank said. Eleven have been fatal. That compares with 19 shootings by the end of October 2017, including eight fatal.
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