By: Las Vegas Now Staff
Police are still searching for the gunmen who shot three people Tuesday evening. It happened at the Villa Capri apartments near Owens and J Street. All three victims were released from the hospital Tuesday night.
The shooting happened just a few hours after a peace rally held by the Safe Village Initiative.
Eyewitness News talked to several members of the community who are still pretty shaken up from the shooting. Though Metro has not confirmed it, these residents are convinced it was gang related and are now fearful of retaliation. They say peace rallies to stop this kind of violence just aren't working.
When night falls in the West Las Vegas neighborhood, residents say they live in fear. It's when gang members rule the streets. Residents are convinced this shooting was gangs at work — a problem that's not going away anytime soon.
Henry Thorns is a product of this community. “Until you help the people that help the kids, who the kids trust can help them — it's ain't gonna.”
He's dedicated his life to helping kids stay away from gangs by giving them other outlets like sports. He says it works — only because the kids know and trust him — a trust they don't feel at Safe Village peace rallies, where Metro's presence is strong. Thorns calls these rallies fronts.
“Come on, you use us to get grant money, funding, but it don't come back to our community,” he said. “It goes outside the community. But if someone like me speak up on it, it's like I don't know what I'm talking about.”
David Osman with Safe Village Initiative says these rallies are only a small piece of what they do. “This is not a front. This is a reality.”
They plan to use members of this very community to hopefully stop what retaliation may be brewing. “When you have an issue of violence that has been plaguing our community for many years, you're not going to have a silver bullet that takes care of it,” said Osman.
Osman believes their steps have been working and uses Metro's decreasing gang violence stats to back him up. But Tuesday night, only a couple of hours after their rally, three people were shot.
The Safe Village Initiative says they plan to ask residents in this complex what could have prevented the shooting. They're hoping to provide kids other activities that will hopefully keep them away from gangs.
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