Published Tuesday, March 16, 2021 | 3:40 p.m.
Updated Tuesday, March 16, 2021 | 9:51 p.m.
Dean Coleman
Mourning the slaying of a fellow gang member, a man took to Facebook to vow revenge.
A month later, he purportedly followed up on the alleged threat, pulling up to a group and opening fire, killing a teenager and wounding two other victims, according to a North Las Vegas arrest report.
Weeks before the Feb. 6 shooting, Metro Police received an anonymous tip from someone saying Dean Coleman was out for blood, and that he would kill the person responsible for his friend’s death, and that he “was prepared to do serious prison time for it,” the report said.
It wasn’t clear if authorities acted on the tipster’s information.
Coleman, 24, was taken into custody Monday on one count each of murder and conspiracy to commit murder, and two counts each of attempted murder, battery with a deadly weapon, assault with a deadly weapon and firing into a car or structure, North Las Vegas court logs show.
The ambush shooting happened about 7:30 p.m. on Davis Place, near Owens Avenue and Interstate 15, police said.
Police at the time said two gunmen approached the victims and fired “for unknown reasons.”
The victims were taken to University Medical Center, where Mekhi Clark, 17, died, police said. Clark suffered multiple gunshot wounds, the Clark County Coroner’s Office said.
Probing the triple shooting, detectives found a separate report that’d been made to Crime Stoppers naming Coleman, who is also known as “Savage,”
noting that he was “shooting people out of revenge” for his friend’s killing, police said.
It wasn’t clear when that tip was received.
Police said that the North Las Vegas shooting was caught on surveillance video.
A car pulled up to an apartment complex and two gunmen got out, approaching a group of five people associated with a rival gang, who were standing at the front of one of the units, and pulling the trigger, police said.
The two others who were shot at were uninjured, police said.
Police could not see the shooters’ faces, but identified the car’s California license plates, which were registered to Coleman.
Looking at Coleman’s Facebook, detectives found a Jan. 6 post in which he decried the killing of his friend, typing that he promised “on my soul” that he was going to “send yu some company (sic),” police said.
Detectives believe that “when Dean said he was going to send some company, he meant that he was going to kill the people (who) were involved in” his friend’s murder, according to the report.
Additionally, three days after the killing, detectives detained Coleman when a license plate reader gave them a hit in Coleman’s North Las Vegas home, police said.
They served a search warrant and found two guns, which Coleman as a felon wasn’t supposed to own, police said. He was arrested on gun charges but bailed out.
Later, ammunition from one of the guns matched some of the bullet casings found at the shooting scene, prompting detectives to obtain a murder warrant a week later, court logs show.
Coleman appeared in court this morning, but records did not list an attorney representing him. Police said Coleman was arrested without incident, but additional details about the case were not immediately available.
