Wednesday, July 31, 2019 | 3:56 p.m.
In retaliation for a beating, the plan was to ring the doorbell of a North Las Vegas house where they believed the attacker lived and shoot anyone who answered the door, police said.
So, on Nov. 17, two men and a woman pulled up to the 3600 block of Hamlin Place, near Vegas Drive and Gowan Road, according to North Las Vegas Police.
Thinking her father was picking her up, a 9-year-old girl went to the door and was shot twice, police said. Her 15-year-old brother took another bullet, police said. Both victims survived.
More than eight months after the Nov. 17 shooting, police said they arrested three suspects.
The alleged shooter, Michael Moffett, 21; the man they were trying to avenge, Anthino Vallanueva; and Vallanueva’s sister Patricia Watts, 33, were jailed last week, City of Las Vegas Jail records show.
Moffett is facing two counts each of attempted murder and battery with a deadly weapon, and five counts of discharging a gun into a structure, jail logs show.
Vallanueva and Watts were jailed on one count each of conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder and battery with a deadly weapon, according to the arrest report and jail logs.
The shooting was caught on a home camera system, and the video was publicly shared. It’s that video that helped detectives identify Moffett, police said.
On July 19, an anonymous tipster told detectives Moffett was drinking at a party and began to boast about being involved in a shooting, according to an arrest report. He then showed the video police had released and “bragged that it was him in the video.”
During his arrest on Thursday, Moffett implicated Vallanueva and Watts in the incident, police said. He said they had conspired to retaliate for a beating Vallanueva had taken from someone who lived at the targeted house, according to police.
Watts told police she drove Moffett and her brother to the neighborhood near Vegas Drive and Gowan Road and that both men got out, according to the report.
The surveillance video captured the rest.
A lanky man police identified as Moffett “walked to the front door and looked at his hand, checking his gun. He stepped into the small alcove...The man stepped back out of sight of the door, raised his right hand and pointed his gun at the door. Moments later, he is seen shooting five times” and running away, according to the report.
Another man, believed to be Vallanueva, was next to him, police said. Vallanueava told detectives he didn’t tell anybody “to shoot anyone at the house,” police said.
The younger victim was shot in the face and shoulder, while her brother was hit in the back of his right thigh, police said. The children said they didn’t know the men who’d pulled up to the house, according to police.
