The North Las Vegas Fire Department has confirmed that two pit bulls killed a 4-month-old baby boy. Eyewitness News at 4, 5 & 6 will have more details.

Nevada is one of three states leading the nation in foreclosure filings for August. Nevada saw an increase of 27-percent, which is higher than a year ago, but less than previous months.

One of the hardest hit areas of the Las Vegas valley is North Las Vegas. On Saturday, there will be a free foreclosure workshop for residents who are in danger of losing their homes. It is hosted by the city of North Las Vegas and there will be representatives from the nonprofit Consumer Credit Counseling Service, the Departmetn of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Housing Administration.

The 7-hour workshop takes place at the Texas Station, at Rancho and Lake Mead, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday.

Two women are under arrest for kidnapping after police say they tried to prove a point about an elementary school's security.

Laurinda Drake's son goes to Jo Mackey Elementary. She says after she dropped off her son for school, she noticed a young boy walking away from the school. She picked him up and says he didn't know where he lived and he didn't want to go back to school. So she took him to the Clark County School District office.

But police recount a much different tale.

Officers say Drake picked up the boy and drove him around to several different locations, including a Wal-Mart. She then took the boy to a friend's house, 40-year-old Elaine Clermont, where police say they arranged local media outlets to meet them at the Clark County Board of Trustees building where they would turn the boy over to the School District.

When Drake and Clermont arrived at the school building, they were met by Clark County School District Police. Officers say they tried asking Drake questions, but she was uncooperative. She was then cuffed and taken into a private room.

After hours of speaking with her, school officers determined Drake actually kidnapped the first grader.

Clermont says Drake was only trying to do the right thing and point out there is a problem with school security. Clermont claims this is not the first time kids have walked off school property at Jo Mackey, and that's why they went to the district office.

“Last year I was walking up to campus to pick up my daughter from school, I saw a kindergartener walking out the front gates. I said, ‘Where you going young man?'” she said.

Apparently, the first grader felt sick and was trying to go home after eating breakfast at school. Why no one at the school saw him leave is still an unanswered question.

But school police say they have a strict policy for handling this type of situation. “There would be no school that would release a first grader on his own if he were ill or anything like that. That wouldn't happen. Parents would be contacted,” said CCSD Lt. Ken Young.

Young says this was an isolated incident. School officials are investigating how this happened. No one at Jo Mackey was able to comment on the case. The first grader has since been reunited with his mom.

Drake and Clermont were arrested for first degree kidnapping and were booked into the North Las Vegas Jail.  

Email your comments to Reporter Janet O

Channel 8 Eyewitness News obtained the audio tapes from the last minutes on board an experimental plane that crashed two weeks ago. You can hear the pilot telling the tower he's going in.

Three people died — the pilot and two people in the house he hit. The elderly couple was just waking up for the day.

Eyewitnesses reported hearing the plane's engine rev then cut off. You could not tell from the conversation with the tower what was happening, but you could hear the concern in the pilot's voice.

Listen to the airport's tower audio tapes

The experimental plane was in the air only one minute 48 seconds. The flight started like any other at the North Las Vegas Airport.

It was supposed to be a test flight for the engine. The NTSB says the owner of the plane added a supercharger to it. The FAA says the engine should have been re-certified to fly, but was not.

Confident that it would work, pilot Mack Murphree asked the tower to take off at about 6:26 a.m.

When a pilot requests to stay in the pattern, other pilots say that means he intended to circle and land again. According to the NTSB the experimental plane did not have the hours to legally land again at North Las Vegas.

It did not matter, the tower noticed something was wrong, “Mike kelo, do you need assistance, sir?”

The response did not answer the question, but you could hear it in the pilot's voice, “Going in. Gong in. Going in. Going in.”

The crash destroyed a home in a gated community on Lake Mead near Simmons. Jack Costa dies in the home on impact. So did the pilot Murphree. Lucy Costa survived the crash, but died later at the hospital.

At the end of the tape, a tower supervisor asked the controller what happened, “I looked up and he was not flying real good. I asked him if he needed assistance. Said he was going in.”

The NTSB doesn't have the final answer to why the plane crashed. That will come in several months.

The plane was based out of Show Low Airport east of Flagstaff, Arizona.

Email your comments to Reporter Edward Lawrence

An emotional meeting is expected to dominate the North Las Vegas Airport Thursday night. Two plane crashes in less than a week at the end of last month have bubbled emotions about the airport to the surface.

The chorus for change has grown louder from residents living around the North Las Vegas Airport. Now the Clark county commissioner for this area wants action.

SLIDESHOW: Plane Crashes Into Home

Thursday night, residents, pilots and airport representatives will talk about what can be done in the name of safety.

Aug. 22 – an experimental plane crashed, killing the elderly pilot and elderly couple in their home.

Aug. 28 – a twin engine plane went down. The pilot died, but this time five people ran to safety from the house.

SLIDESHOW: Plane Crashes Into North Las Vegas Home

Now a second meeting is aimed at easing tensions as Clark County Commissioner Lawrence Weekly calls for change.

“I don't think that anyone would want that as you are trying to raise your families and live our lives to have to worry that if I am at home watching television, minding my own business with my family, that I have to worry about a plane crashing in my home,” said Weekly.

He knows. Not only is the North Las Vegas Airport in his district. Weekly lives within a mile of the airport.

“It's amazing when you can stand in my front yard and see the low altitude that some of these pilots are flying. You can actually see the pilot in the plane. That is a little scary,” said Weekly.

Weekly plans to write a letter to Nevada's congressional delegation asking them to change the law about governing airports.

He wants the Clark County aviation director to require experimental planes and beginning pilots to fly from rural airports – not urban ones like North Las Vegas.

“You cannot be guaranteed 100-percent. I think moving operations like that to a more rural area of town would give some solution and peace of mind to the residents that live there,” said Weekly.

Aviation Association President Dave Lerner says that will not work because pilots from other airports won't know the rules. “Can you imagine the chaos that would cause if I were to take off from the North Las Vegas Airport and not know the rules and regulations of another airport?”

He organized the meeting to listen to concerns and offer a pilot's perspective. “I do agree with them that we need to enforce the procedures, and I don't know too many pilots who do not follow the procedures. They would be darn fools if they don't,” said Lerner.

Lerner hopes that by engaging the community a middle ground can be found so scenes like this don't create an us and them mentality.

The meeting is open to the public and starts at 6 p.m. at the North Las Vegas Airport. Any changes to flight numbers or restrictions of who can take off where would have to come from an act of Congress.

Email your comments to Reporter Edward Lawrence.

Residents came together after two plane crashes happened in neighborhoods just like theirs. The neighbors have been concerned for years and while they all knowingly moved in next to the North Las Vegas Airport, now that two planes crashed into neighboring homes they are even more scared for their safety.

Three were killed in the first crash and only the pilot died in the second. In all, three homes were damaged or destroyed.

A lot of neighbors, and some pilots have complaints about the Clark County Department of Aviation. Yes, the airport was in place before the homes, but why was it allowed to grow so much? The meeting was designed to bring issues to the table and work on finding solutions.

These are the risks of having a busy airport in your backyard - a plane making an emergency landing on your street, or worse yet, a plane crashing right into your home.

A meeting on the North Las Vegas Airport sparked some fireworks. The group is aptly-named “Not Tonight! The North Las Vegas Airport Gave Me a Headache.”

“We've had 66 incidents as verified by Forbes Magazine, again making us the most dangerous airport in the nation,” said Ed Gobel with Not Tonight.

Neighbors sounded off about their pains. “They fly very close sometimes. You can give them a cup of coffee almost, that's how close. You can make out their faces,” said Sharon Gobel.

Sharon is concerned about her children's safety, “I get a little worried if they're going outside and playing. And my daughter's school is less than a block away from us.”

The most common complaint is planes flying too low above homes. And with two different planes falling from the sky down onto homes in less than a week, Marcus Gobel is living in fear and worried about his kids, “We say, ‘Hi.' to the people in the planes going by almost every single day.”

The pilots had their say, too. “I've got to say some things because I'm sitting here listening to this and I'm trying to keep my blood pressure down,” said Ed Smith. “They are a lot higher than you think they are.”

It's a complex issue that's gotten bigger over the years, but something everyone in this room has an opinion on.

“It's like having a little cottage behind your house, and all of a sudden having a huge mega-resort behind your house. That's what it's like and nobody listens to you,” said Ditty Markoff.

Email your comments to Reporter Aaron Drawhorn

During a recent round of cuts to the state budget, lawmakers asked the public for suggestions about where to trim. The I-Team has obtained those ideas and finds the most popular suggestion is a four day work week for state employees.

Above cutting services for illegal immigrants and raising taxes, the four day work week is the most frequent suggestion.

One lawmaker said who wouldn't want a shorter work week; another asked how many state employees participated in the survey. Kidding aside, several Southern Nevada cities already save money this way. We took a look at how they do it.

Before John Q Public walks in to Henderson City Hall or makes his way to a city office, he or she encounters Lizet Elias.

“I'm the first stop here.”

A long-time city employee who says with a straight a face she likes mostly everything about her job.

“The four day work week is just, I just love the four day work week,” she said.

Lizet, like the majority of Henderson employees, works four days a week – 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m, with a half hour unpaid lunch. That means the city pays her for a 38-hour instead of a 40-hour work week.

Shave two hours off the time sheets of some 2,000 city workers and the savings adds up to nearly $5.7 million a year.

“Honestly I don't see a downside,” said Assistant City Manager Bristol Ellington. “If you ask 10 people are they getting the best bang for their buck, they probably wouldn't know that we worked a four day work week. They would know that we are open five days a week, and we are providing all the services for them.”

Staggered schedules allows Henderson to provide essential city services like business licensing, passports and building inspections five days a week.

North Las Vegas too staggers some shifts to meet the needs of its customers. But unlike Henderson, it pays for a four day, 40-hour work week. North Las Vegas derives its cost savings by closing city offices on Fridays, thereby cutting its utility bills by more than a $100,000 a year.

“It works well for the city, it works well for the employees and we believe it works for the community as long as we continue to strike a good balance,” said North Las Vegas City Manager Gregory Rose.

Back in Henderson, the clock ticks 5 p.m. and Lizet and her colleagues are still at their desks.

“Even though it's a long day, we do work 10 hours, it's totally worth it,” said Lizet. For her, a shorter week means a longer weekend with her family.

For the city, it means millions in savings at little expense to the taxpayer.

Utah just went to a four day work week and expects to save $3 million a year by closing state buildings on Fridays.

Here in Nevada, a five day work week is actually written into state law. So, it would take legislative action to make a change. But several lawmakers the I-Team spoke with said in these tough times, it's certainly worth taking a look at.

If you'd like to see the list of suggestions so far, click here. If you want to make a suggestion of your own for cutting the budget, click here.

The foreclosure crisis has left thousands of homes in Clark County sitting empty. Those vacant properties soon become eyesores.

A North Las Vegas man is doing his part to try to prevent an abandoned home from becoming a neighborhood nuisance. Now, he says he was threatened with jail time.

The owners abandoned the place a few weeks ago because they couldn't afford it. The grass was overgrown and the pool collecting debris. The man next door had enough, so he decided to spruce up the place. But the bank that owns the home threatened him with jail.

For the past two weeks Ken Gifford has taken care of a home that isn't his own. Although it seems like a noble deed, it's in his best interest, “I don't want my property value going down.”

His neighbors couldn't afford to keep it and while the foreclose notice wasn't posted on Gifford's front door, the crisis hit home, “I have seen it dotted in the neighborhood and all of a sudden it's right next door.”

The home will likely sit empty for months, “There are three houses right around there that are. Their yard has been that way for two years — no landscape, broken windows, and I don't want this house to turn out like that.”

While the owners walked away, their neighbors are now the ones who must pay.

“This almost looks like corn here growing up,” said Gifford. “So the pool's going to turn green and the yards going to turn brown unless somebody does something.”

Worried the pool might become a breeding ground for mosquitoes, he called for help.

“I called U.S. Bank. They said call the owners and I said they aren't here,” said Gifford. “Then he basically said, “Sir, I am not going argue with you. Goodbye.' Click.”

So Gifford started keeping up the property, but he says the bank told him to stop, “They said if I come on the property, I am trespassing and I can be arrested and put in jail.”

North Las Vegas code enforcement says the owners are responsible for upkeep until the bank takes over. That could be a year or more. That's too long for Gifford to live next to a mess. He says he's willing to risk going to jail.

“All they need to do is turn on the water and electricity and the neighbors will take care of the rest, but nobody will do that,” he said.

North Las Vegas code enforcement officials don't recommend neighbors clean up foreclosed property. It is against the law to trespass. But if you need help getting a property in your neighborhood cleaned up, call code enforcement to find the owner or they will clean it and the owner will have to pay for it.

Email your comments to Reporter Travell Eiland

The battle over a shooting park in the northern part of the Las Vegas valley has now moved to federal court.

A group of residents is calling the gun park a “Disneyland with guns” and the county is not commenting on this latest filing. The shooting park is located between Buffalo and Decatur at the far northern end of the valley.

“It's peaceful, quiet, beautiful view of the mountains, kids playing in the streets.” This is how neighbors who live in the northwest part of the valley describe their neighborhood. But they say this will all change because of a gun park that's being built near their homes.

On Monday neighbors walked from their attorney's office to the Lloyd George Federal Court building where their lawyer filed the paperwork on their behalf.

“All complaints are efiled and then there will also be a motion seeking a hearing for an injunction. An injunction would simply say let's stop and reconsider the environmental concerns, the nature of the use, the volume to people that will be traveling there every day,” said Matthew Callister, attorney.

Tyson Wrensch lives in a neighborhood and says he wants the park moved, but also asks that the county change the way it discloses major projects like this.

“The builders in that area are still not showing a shooting range near these homes. Why hasn't the county stepped in. I had to sign a disclosure for Aliante casino which hasn't been built yet, and that's five miles away,” Wrensch said.

Lorraine Lennard also lives in the neighborhood and says the county has compared the noise level to a barking dog or a helicopter.

Imagine listening to a barking dog, or a helicopter or constant repetition of gun fire for twelve hours a day, it's enough to drive a women crazy,” she said.

Neighbors say the county notified them that the 750-foot radius for a project is larger than McCarran International Airport and six times larger than Disneyland. The county says they can not talk about pending litigation.

A Las Vegas teen who lost his life because of an inattentive driver was remembered Monday night when loved one honored him with a candlelight walk.

The driver who hit and killed 16-year-old Keanu Irving Lee Davila told police he just took his eyes off the road for a second before he slammed into Davila, who was riding a bicycle.

Family and friends gathered at Alexander and Coleman where the deadly accident happened. 

“He was a great guy. He was one of my best friends and he would always make you laugh and cheer you up if you were ever sad or anything,” said Jazmine Mejia, Davila's friend.

Friends say Davila was a hero in his final moments because he pushed his young nephew out of the car's path. Many are now calling for a change. Saying something must be done about the road since so many students take it to school and there is not enough there to protect them or make drivers slow down.

“This is too much and we need justice for my son because they have to do something they have to do something about the streets, because this is ridiculous,” said Irving Davila, victim's father. 

“I think that it is ridiculous. They've got no reason to be driving that fast. It is a school zone so it should be pretty slow and apparently they were ignoring it,” said Bridgette Morales, Davila's friend.

Many of the students who gathered Monday night say too many drivers speed down the street and during school it's no better. One loss is already too much for them and they now want a crossing guard during school hours to keep them safe. They are also calling for a crosswalk and a stop sign to be put up.

Davila's father told Eyewitness News that he was planning to take his son to live with him in New York this week and now he will never get that chance.