Monday, March 6, 2000 | 11:54 a.m.
Henderson Police today will review three Las Vegas armored-car holdups to see if there is any link to Friday's slaying of two armored-truck guards during a robbery in a busy shopping center's parking lot.
"We're going to scour (Metro Police's) reports and then sit down with them to see if there is connection," Henderson Capt. Richard Perkins said.
Police are looking into last year's armored-car robberies at the Mandalay Bay and Desert Inn hotel-casinos and the 1998 armored car heist at the MGM Grand.
Police have received hundreds of leads on the two shooters and the getaway-car driver responsible for the killings of guards Ricardo S. Sosa, 47, and Gary Dean Prestidge II, 23, Friday outside a clothing store. But no arrests have been made as of this morning.
Henderson Police, who are being assisted by the FBI and Metro, talked to more than 100 people over the weekend, sifted through evidence and continued to search for the three men responsible for killing the driver, Sosa, a father of five, and his young partner, Prestidge.
"I think we're going to catch them because we're working around the clock, and we're going to stay on it until we catch them," said Henderson Police acting Chief Michael Mayberry.
Police say at about 11:25 a.m. Friday the guards pulled up in front of the Ross Dress for Less store, 649 Stephanie St. in the Whitney Ranch Center, as part of their regular route for Armored Transport of Nevada.
Hours before, the robbers set up the deadly ambush. They backed one stolen minivan into a space in front of the store. They then pulled another stolen minivan in front end first one parking space away. They did this, police say, so each sliding door opened into the parking space between the two minivans. For a couple hours a masked gunman sat in each minivan concealed from view by tinted windows.
Prestidge stepped from the armored car and headed for the store. The masked gunmen emerged from the minivans armed with assault rifles and confronted Prestige of Las Vegas. A gun fight ensued with Prestidge firing five shots from his handgun before the robbers' shots killed him.
Sosa, behind the wheel of the armored car at the time, peered back outside when the shooting started. He was shot twice as he looked out to his partner. Both men died at the scene. Mayberry said bullet-resistant vests wouldn't have protected the men from the assault rifle bullets.
The robbers fled with three bags of money -- one that Prestidge had in his hand and two others out of the truck. Police would not reveal how much cash was taken.
"This was obviously planned out," Mayberry said. "They knew the truck was coming and knew where to park the minivans so (Prestidge) had to walk in between them. Anyone going into that store from the parking lot had to walk in between those minivans."
The robbers fled in a maroon Chrysler Intrepid with Utah license plates. They traveled only about a quarter mile to a parking lot by a J.C. Penney store at the Galleria at Sunset mall and got into another vehicle, either a dark minivan or a sport utility vehicle.
The two minivans and the Intrepid were part of 12 vehicles stolen in January from Thrifty Car Rental on Warm Springs Road, police said. All the license plates found on or in the vehicles were also stolen.
Inside the Intrepid was blood from a gunshot wound inflicted on one of the gunmen by Prestidge before he was killed.
"Looking at the amount of blood, it was a serious enough wound that it would require medical treatment," Mayberry said. "Because we believe without treatment he may die, we have gotten the information about the wound out to all Arizona, Utah, California and Nevada hospitals."
Police reviewed video surveillance tapes from various businesses near the robbery and at the Galleria at Sunset mall where the Intrepid was found, but none of the tapes reveal many clues.
The Intrepid was parked near a Penney store which has a security camera in the area, but it wasn't turned on, Perkins said.
"Detectives were pretty sure it would have revealed something," he said.
Perkins said they are looking at armored car robberies in California and Texas, but don't think they are connected to the Henderson heist.
Anyone with information in this case is asked to call Henderson Police at 565-2009 or Secret Witness at 385-5555.
Keith Paul covers crime and public safety for the Sun. He can be reached at (702) 259-4057 or by e-mail at [email protected].
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