Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Police: Threat over drug money spurred brutal, fiery attack on Las Vegas family

House Fire near Lamb and Sherrill

Steve Marcus

Offers stand by the intersection of Lamb Boulevard and Sherrill Avenue after a home fire Monday, Nov. 16, 2015.

Updated Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2016 | 10:40 a.m.

A threat over a shipment of illegal drugs led to a Las Vegas family being bound, stabbed and beaten by assailants who then set fire to their home as they lay bleeding, Metro Police reported.

The attack, which occurred Nov. 16, 2015, left 45-year-old Mario Jimenez dead that day and resulted in the death of Angelica Jimenez, 27, early this year.

According to police, Mario Jimenez was a partner in a decade-long relationship in which he supplied drugs to a cohort, Hakim Rydell Blanche-Jones, who would send them by mail or FedEx across the country.

The report gave the following account of the incident:

Shortly before the attack, Jimenez threatened Blanche-Jones when some packages from a shipment did not reach their destination, Jimenez demanded payment from Blanche-Jones for missing drugs and implied that he would inform members of a Mexican drug-trafficking ring if he didn’t get the money.

“I’m not gonna do nothin’ to you all, but the people in Mexico is,” Jimenez said.

But instead of paying Jimenez, police said, Blanche-Jones and two other men went to his home, near Charleston and Lamb boulevards, and ordered him to tell them where he kept drugs and cash in the residence.

To get Jimenez to talk, Blanche-Jones and the two other men — Malik Niem Watson and Darrin Rafael Wilder — bound family members with zip ties and duct tape and then stabbed them. They put a 10-month-old girl in the backyard with the family dogs.

And to teach Jimenez and the family a lesson for the threats of having them hurt, one of the men grabbed a red plastic canister filled with gas and poured it on them; another one lit a paper on fire and sparked the blaze that killed Mario and Angelica Jimenez. The alleged assailants then fled the scene.

A neighbor who noticed the fire pulled two women and a man through a sliding door at the backyard, where the 10-month old baby had been, police said. One woman was naked and the other half-clothed. Both suffered substantial burns.

Blanche-Jones, Watson and Wilder were identified after an investigation involving Metro detectives and U.S. Postal Service inspectors.

Watson, 27, was booked into the Clark County Detention Center last week, jail logs show. Wilder and Blanche-Jones have been taken into federal custody since the incident.

Each man implicated in the attack faces 13 charges, which include counts of murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, battery with a deadly weapon, robbery, and conspiracy to commit murder, records show.

Editor’s note: This story has been revised to correct the spelling of Hakim Rydell Blanche-Jones’ name.

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