Eyewitnesses and officers relived the day when a mother was killed by police in front of her children and husband. But in all the differing testimony at Thursday’s coroner’s inquest, a lot doesn’t add up. There were conflicting accounts of what happened.

On the stand, Zyber Selimaj became emotional recounting through an interpreter how being pulled over for speeding lead his wife Deshira to come to his aide.

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“My wife told me to sign the citation and she told me she would come to the place in 10 minutes,” he said.

When Deshira pulled up, officers say she got out of her truck with her two sons and a knife.

“She is holding the knife and she is yelling and screaming,” said Henderson Traffic Officer Patrick Gilmore.

Some said threats were even made toward Deshira’s two young sons.

“I recall, at one point for a few moments, her lifting up the knife it appeared to me as though the knife were in front of his neck,” said witness Melanie Nelson.

However Zyber said his wife never threatened anyone and the boys came to him out of fear of the police.

“They were very scared because they see that the police had guns directed at their mother,” he said.

A taped police interview with one of her boys, 5-year-old Arber Salimaj, tells yet another story: “She got something to kill herself. What did she get to kill herself with? A “see-cut.” What is a “see-cut” used for? To cut something. Then what happened? Then the police killed my mom.”

Witnesses say while Deshira did have a knife, she didn’t seem threatening and they don’t understand why using a Taser was not enough.

“It is my personal opinion that there were ample opportunities to intervene in a non-lethal way, plenty of police officers. And my own instinct was to diffuse the situation,” said Nelson.

During the inquest, a total of 30 witnesses are expected to testify. The inquest will begin again Friday morning and may continue into next week.

Email your comments to Reporter Amanda Hernandez

More than two dozen witnesses could testify in the two-day coroner's inquest into the police shooting of a Henderson mother who drove an ice cream truck.

Among the witnesses are Deshira Selimaj's children, who saw the shooting of their mother on Feb. 12, 2008. Henderson police officer Luke Morrison shot the woman after police used a Taser gun on her.

Selimaj's husband, Zyber, was the second witness called to the stand Thursday. He became very emotional during the testimony.

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He said that his wife did not have a knife in her hand. He said she was on her knees, her hands up. According to him, she told the police to leave her husband alone, leave us alone, the kids alone.

He also testified he heard the shot and then saw his wife on the ground. “I heard the shot, and I saw my wife falling down on the ground. I didn't see my boys because they were behind me.” He was the asked if she threatened police. ”No, she was not threatening the police. She asked them to leave us alone.”

He then said, “When the police officer told me he wanted to speak to my wife, the police said I know your wife because I gave her a ticket a month ago. The police officer knew us.” He then added, “They pick on us.”

He then told a story about her going to a playground. After 10 minutes, the police came up and told her to turn off her music and told the kids to go away and not buy from her. The police told her she had overstayed in that area. He said she told police she'd only been there 10 minutes. Zyber said he feels the police never liked him or his wife.

He said he did not tell officers he was going to commit suicide, and that the police never told him they wanted him to go to a hospital.

The 10-person jury heard first from the Henderson police officer who pulled over Deshira Selimaj's husband in an ice cream truck on Feb. 12 that led to the fatal shooting.

Officer Patrick Gilmore pulled over Zyber Selimaj for speeding and running a stop sign. He testified Selimaj started crying and apologizing in English when given the citation, then called his wife, Deshira, to come up to the scene.

Gilmore said she arrived 15 minutes later, also in an ice cream truck with her two sons, and she approached him asking, “Why do you do this?”

Gilmore said two more officers arrived to calm her down, but that didn't work.

“She was yelling and screaming with he knife pointing down saying I will kill you, I will kill myself,” said Gilmore.

Gilmore continued saying she then threatened her oldest son with the knife. That's when one of the officers then shot her with a Taser, knocking her down. She got back up, still holding the knife, and officer Gilmore said a minute later one gunshot was fired and he saw her fall to the ground.

Officer Luke Morrison, who fired the fatal shot, was not one of the first officers on scene. The jury will hear from him, the Selimaj family and 28 other witnesses over the next two days.

A few eyewitnesses told police that they did not see a knife and the woman appeared to be on the ground when she was fatally shot.

It is up to the jury to determine how, when and where Deshira Selimaj was killed and if her death was justifiable, excusable or criminal homicide by the Henderson police department.

Henderson police have issued an alert for a teen missing for nearly a week now. The picture of Austin Johns is to the left. He's 17 but is developmentally disabled and takes medication.

He was last seen April 3 near Basic High School.

Austin is known to run away from home but there's concern because of his condition and he's never been gone this long.

Call 267-4750 if you can help Henderson police.

The coroner’s inquest into the police shooting death of a Henderson woman will happen as scheduled. Attorneys for the victim asked for a delay in order to get access to more evidence. But a judge denied that request Wednesday afternoon.

The attorney representing the family of the shooting victim wanted a delay because he says they have not received all of the evidence. Without that, they say they cannot pose critical questions during the inquest.

The inquest is set to begin Thursday at 9 a.m. and will be shown live on Las Vegas One, channel 19 and streamed live here on LasVegasNOW.com.  

On Feb. 12, Henderson police officer Luke Morrison shot and killed Deshira Selimaj. Police had stopped Selimaj’s husband after he ran a stop sign in his ice cream truck.

When she arrived in her own ice cream truck with two of their children, police say she had a knife. After using a Taser on her, they shot her.

Since the shooting, the family’s attorney says he has struggled to get important pieces of evidence from the police and DA, including the official autopsy results and contact information for witnesses.

Last month, the attorney addressed this issue on “Face-to-Face with Jon Ralston.”

“I’ve spoken to the deputy district attorney who will be handling this. He indicates to me that he will be fair by virtue of the expansion of the hearing to two days. It may very well be he will include some of those witnesses. But whether he does so or not is up to him. Number one and two, the question is his. They can be hardball questions, which I doubt. They can be softball questions, which we’ve seen lots of times in these types of proceedings. That’s the criticism of the coroner’s inquest proceeding to begin with. It is all too often perceived by the public to be a rubber stamp. We hope this case would be the exception,” said Jim Jimmerson, the family’s attorney.

During a coroner’s inquest, only the district attorney can ask questions and present evidence. The family of the deceased and their attorney may submit questions in writing to the magistrate, but he or she does not have to ask those questions.

The coroner’s inquest is basically a fact-finding mission – not a trial. The jury must decide if the shooting was justified, excusable or criminal. But regardless of the jury’s decision, the DA can choose not to pursue the case further.

Email your comments to Reporter Adrienne Augustus.

The Henderson mother accused of killing her infant child in California made her first court appearance Monday morning. The 20-year-old Michelle Pedroza waived extradition.

The state of California will now have 30 days to come get her.

She was arrested Thursday night after a short standoff with police at her home in Henderson.

Authorities in Santa Ana, California found the little girl's body in the backyard of a home there.

Neighbors there said Pedroza left about a year ago.

A toddler is dead after falling into a pool at a Henderson home. Her mother found her floating in a pool Monday morning. Neighbors say 1-year-old had just started walking.

More than a half dozen police arrived on scene after getting a 911 call from the child’s mother just before 10 a.m. They found the mother in the living room giving CPR to the child. (more…)

Firefighters are investigating the cause of a two-alarm fire that gutted four homes under construction last night in Henderson.

No injuries are reported in the 11:05 p.m. fire near Eastgate and Sunset roads. That's between U.S. 95 and Boulder Highway. Damage is estimated at more than $700,000.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

It's a theft one Henderson family didn't see coming. They woke up Friday morning to find their horses loose and one missing. A quick call to police revealed they were not the only ones hit, another neighbor had a horse stolen as well.

Food tossed across the floor, gates left open and horses running around, that's how Donna Jenkins says thieves left her barn. But what they took was far worse.

“He is a family member. He needs to be returned. He's 28 he has no shoes on,” she said.

Donna says the thief broke into her barn taking a $5,000 saddle and then, after trying some of her less willing horses, took her oldest and sweetest.

“They took the easiest horse down the road. We found out the same thing, they took the easiest horse,” she said.

Donna's neighbor also had a horse stolen overnight, leaving owners worried and looking for answers.

“I'm trying to find my horse out there. Is there a clue as to where this horse could have gone or where he could have been dumped at?” said Jenkins.

With little the authorities can do, Donna keeps close to her other pets, fearing the worst for her old friend.

“He needs to come home because no one will take care of him like I do,” she said.

Even news from a neighbor that the horse had been found, along with the suspected thief, does little to heal Donna's heart or fill her now empty stall.

But one thing does get her moving, “I'm going to hook up my horse trailer.”

News from the neighbors — they may have found her horse, “Up there on a hill somewhere. I don't even know how to get up there. We're going to hike and we're going to see where he is at.”

After a very long hike, Donna was reunited with her horse. She says whoever stole him ran him pretty hard, so he's sore and lame, but she says he should be okay now that he's back home.

Email your comments to Reporter Amanda Hernandez

A harmless bag of construction core samples caused the Las Vegas Fire & Rescue Bomb Squad to be called out Wednesday morning and resulted in a road closure.

At around 6:30 a.m., the bomb squad was called to Rainbow Avenue and Post Road after a street sweeper noticed a suspicious bag with what appeared to be tubes sticking out.

The bag turned out to be core samples of earth. The fire department says they have had several similar incidents and are asking construction site to properly mark their core sample containers so they are not mistaken for bombs.

Henderson City Council has said “no” to teen dance clubs and parents plan to fight the ban as long as they can.

The council members voted to approve an ordinance that bans any new teenage night clubs, citing shootings in other states as reason. Their agenda also lists that the clubs are not good for the moral well being of the residents.

“You are telling the kids they cant do something. Are we a bible belt here that all of a sudden its not ok to open up a club for kids to enjoy themselves?” said Henderson resident Sherry Harris.

Parents who take their kids to clubs like Frozen75 couldn't disagree with the council more, saying violence could happen anywhere. But they maintain at the regulated clubs, at least security is in place.

“It's not going to go anywhere, it's just going to go underground and more of the shootings and things that they talked about and the druggies and things. It's gonna continue. It's gonna skyrocket,” said Frozen75's owner Samuel Azeke.

Azeke says kids are safer at his place than at underground parties, but he feels now they will be targeted by the city to get them out as well. Parents also say the list of other activities for kids that the council provided doesn't work, because bowling and arcades were for a different generation.