Las Vegas Police Battle Mob After Apparent Racial Attack

Police used tear gas and foam pellets early Sunday to battle a crowd that gathered after suspected gang members beat a passerby in an apparently racially triggered assault, police said.

A white motorist who drove near a picnic breaking up in the northwest part of the city was attacked by blacks who appeared to target the man because he is white, said Sgt. Mike Daily. The man was treated for minor injuries, Dailey said.

An armored personnel vehicle carrying SWAT team members sent in to break up the crowd was fired upon, and police were pelted with rocks and bottles, said Sgt. Ron Swift. Officers “had to duck a few times,” he said.

The crowd, which numbered 1,000 at one point but shrank to 150, broke up. But some among them moved to north Las Vegas, where police were shot at again, and police fired foam pellets and wooden blocks to break up the crowd.

Two shoe stores were looted and trashed by people who broke through security doors, Swift said.

Thirty people were arrested, mostly for weapons and disturbance violations, in the worst violence in the city since the news of the not guilty verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating case triggered rioting April 30, Swift said.

Almost nightly gatherings, most of them peaceable, have taken place in the northwest part of the city since then.

Police began breaking up gatherings of 10 or more people Sunday evening in an effort to prevent continued violence between officers and gang members.

Lt. Steve Franks said the groups were warned that they constituted an unlawful assembly. They were dispersing without problems, he said.