By: Las Vegas Now Staff
Metro Police are investigating the possible murder of a man left for dead in a drainage ditch near Tropicana and I-215. Investigators say that man was shot at least one time in the head.
They're trying to determine how he got inside that drainage ditch and who killed him.
Street crews working in the area found the body of a young African American man inside the ditch around 6 p.m. Monday night. Police are waiting on the coroner's officer to come out here to examine the body and remove it.
Metro says the body isn't decomposed. Rigor mortis hasn't set in, so they believe that they are working a fresh crime scene.
Investigators say it is impossible that someone could lift up the extremely heavy storm drain cover and dump a body at the busy intersection in broad daylight. They believe that the victim and his killer were inside the storm drain together when he was shot.
But Metro officials aren't sure how they got down there. One possibility is that they entered from an area similar to this and walked through the tunnels.
“I can't say whether this kid is homeless or not. There are a lot of things you can do down there; people drink, do drugs, but this is a situation that he was clearly down there with the people that killed him,” said Metro Lt. Lew Roberts.
Roberts says there is evidence that other people were in the drain, but they are saying what that evidence is.
They also have possible witnesses, people walking in the area say they heard gun shots about an hour before police got here, but they couldn't tell where the shots were coming from.
Metro police officials have no solid leads but they say they are going to be looking at surveillance video from businesses in the area to see if anything was caught on tape.
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