Road-Rage Suspect: I 'Got Those Kids'

Police report tells complicated tale of Las Vegas shooting
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 21, 2015 7:07 AM CST
Road-Rage Suspect: I 'Got Those Kids'
Erich Milton Nowsch Jr. Nowsch, 19, in a police photo.   (AP Photo/Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department)

As more details emerge, the Las Vegas road-rage slaying seems to get more and more complicated. In fact, "road rage" doesn't seem to apply anymore. Suspect Erich Nowsch has told police he wasn't involved in any shooting, period, but cops say the 19-year-old bragged to friends about shooting people he thought were after him. "Got those kids," he told them. "They were after me, and I got them," according to the police report. A rough outline, with details from the Las Vegas Sun, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, NBC News, and the Associated Press:

  • First threat: Tammy Meyers, 44, took her 15-year-old daughter, Kristal, out for a night driving lesson. As they were heading home, with Tammy driving, Kristal says she leaned over and honked at a silver car that pulled up beside them. She says the driver spun in front of them, forcing them to stop, and the driver got out and told Tammy, "I'm gonna come back for you and your daughter." Kristal says the man appeared to be 6 feet tall; Nowsch is 5-3.

  • Two shootings: Tammy sped home and summoned her 22-year-old son, Brandon. He says he urged his mom to call police and stay home, but went along when she said she would go looking for the car alone. They found the silver car and began following, and Brandon says someone in the passenger seat began firing at them. They sped home, and Brandon says the silver car followed them to their cul-de-sac, where a person in the passenger seat fired at them again. He says he fired back, the car left, and he discovered that his mother had been shot in the head.
  • Nowsch to friends: In the version Nowsch told friends, he said he was in a park near the school that night when he thought someone was following him in a green car. (The color of the Meyers' vehicle.) He called a friend with the silver Audi to come pick him up. He said he started shooting the first time when he thought he saw someone in the green car waving a gun from the window. He also said that he was sure he hit someone when he fired again on the cul-de-sac. The driver of the silver car has not been identified.
The police report seems to suggest that Nowsch mistook the Meyers' driving lesson as a threat, and things spiraled out of control after that. As previously reported, Tammy Meyers knew Nowsch, and had been acting as a sort of mentor to him since his father's suicide in 2010. (More road rage stories.)

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