Community efforts helped nab suspect in execution-style triple slaying

By Ricardo Torres-Cortez

Published Tuesday, May 31, 2016 | 11:51 a.m.

Updated Tuesday, May 31, 2016 | 10 p.m.

The day in December after police found the bodies of three people who had been forced to the floor and executed by gunshot in a drug-related robbery, Metro Capt. Robert Plummer met with community leaders.

"I was upset that it happened in this community and that three lives were lost senselessly," said Plummer, who oversees Metro's Bolden Area Command in central Las Vegas. Within a week, there were "boots on the ground" engaging community members.

And it's with the help of those members that homicide investigators identified Gerald Jamone Pointer, 39, as the sole suspect in the slayings, Lt. Dan McGrath said.

Pointer is accused of killing married couple Marty Cornell Young and Charlita Lashunda Carroll, and DeAndre Leggett during a Dec. 7 robbery police said stemmed from trade in crack cocaine at an apartment complex on Jackson Avenue near D Street, where police, faith leaders an family members of the victims spoke Tuesday.

By March 16, a task force took Pointer into custody in Chicago, where he was believed to be for under a month, McGrath said. He had violated Nevada parole after serving a 10-year sentence for robbery.

Officers were called about 6 p.m. Dec. 7 to the 200 block of Jackson Avenue to investigate reports of gunshots and found three bodies, police said.

The victims were forced to the floor and shot in the head, McGrath said. An investigation determined Pointer went to the apartment with the intention of stealing drugs and money, he said.

"Nobody deserves to be executed," said McGrath, who described the shooting as "unfathomable."

It doesn't matter if drugs were involved, he said. "To have three people thrown down and executed over a small amount of drugs is ... a tragedy."

With tears streaming from her face, Latoya Carroll said: "My sister was not a bad person. She was loving. She was caring. She has a son and has a family to support."

"They didn't deserve this," Latoya Carroll said. "No matter what the criminal history is or what the news and you reporters put out there. That day they weren't bad people."

"Everybody makes mistakes and that day they paid (for) theirs," she said. "They did not deserve any of this."

In an effort to combat crime in the community, residents in the area led by leaders from the Greater New Jerusalem Church and Muhammad Mosque 75 partnered with Metro to form the "D Street Strong Project."

Group members canvass the nearby neighborhoods, which Plummer said in the past were "plagued" by violence, in an effort to engage community residents and offer services.

They keep a log of nearly 300 community members and what their needs are, such as employment or education needs, and pass it along to Metro, which gets other agencies involved.

The efforts "have really cleaned up this area," Plummer said. Crime has dropped "dramatically," because of it, he said.

Pointer is facing three counts of murder and one count each of robbery, burglary and illegal possession of firearm, police said. He was sent back to prison for parole violations under one of his many aliases, Leroy Greenwood.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.