Metro Police and SWAT officers on the scene of shots fired on an RTC bus near N. Nellis Blvd. and E. Bonanza Road on Wednesday, August 30, 2017.
Friday, Sept. 1, 2017 | 6:02 p.m.
Brett Sporich
A gunman who fired rounds inside a public bus after everyone inside had fled — prompting a SWAT response and east-valley road closures and evacuations — told an officer that he didn’t intend to hurt anyone, according to a Metro Police arrest report.
Instead, he fired three times to test the gun because he was going to “put one in his head,” he told the officer, according to the report. The man was arrested without further incident about three hours later.
Prior to the incident, Brett Sporich, a 58-year-old man who uses a wheelchair, was seen waving a gun inside a fast-food restaurant before boarding the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada bus and continuing to do so, police said.
He said to people who encountered statements along the lines of, “I didn’t used to be like this,” “I’m not going back to jail,” "I’m not a bad person, but if anyone tries to hit me,” police wrote.
No one was injured and Sporich presumably didn’t threaten any bus passengers as they fled. He was being evaluated for mental competency, police said on Wednesday.
Officers were dispatched about 12:30 p.m. to the intersection of Nellis Boulevard and Bonanza Road. As a precautionary measure, several businesses and nearby schools were evacuated and roads were shut down in the area. Sporich only fired the three rounds, police said.
He was booked at the Clark County Detention Center on three counts of illegally discharging a gun within a structure, jail logs show. He remained held without bail Friday afternoon and was scheduled for a felony arraignment hearing on Tuesday.
A records search yielded no previous court cases involving Sporich in Southern Nevada.
