METRO POLICE
Herbert Rogers
Thursday, July 5, 2018 | 8:45 p.m.
It was a noise that alerted an elderly victim that she wasn’t alone as an intruder made his way through her modest house near downtown Las Vegas last weekend.
Not long after, on Sunday morning, that perpetrator would beat her and shoot her in the face with her own gun and in her living room, said Metro Capt. Lazaro Chavez Thursday afternoon. And before the onslaught was over, Herbert Scott Rogers also would try to sexually assault her.
She survived.
Rogers, a registered sex offender with a lengthy rap sheet, was arrested Monday at his girlfriend’s home, about 5 miles south of the crime scene.
To his knowledge, Chavez said, it wasn’t clear if the 53-year-old suspect had previously scoped out the house on Francis Avenue, near the historic Huntridge Theater.
It’s a “relatively quiet” neighborhood, Chavez said. “There’s nothing more particular about her house than the others” except maybe the age of the victim, he noted.
But by all accounts, “this was obviously a very terrible crime on some of our most vulnerable,” Chavez said.
Before the shooting, apparently, there was some sort of fracas for the gun, in which the woman was overpowered, Chavez said. Police were summoned about 9 a.m., dispatch records show.
The victim told KTNV Channel 13 that she woke up to find a naked man ransacking some dishes. When she confronted him, said the woman — who appeared on camera with heavy black and blue on her face — he charged at her, saying he was going to “rape” her and “whacked” her on the face.
Sometime later, he shot her and she played dead, she told the TV station. “I kept thinking, I don’t want to die this way.”
Many more details on the attack, how investigators connected a face and a name to it, or Rogers’ arrest weren’t immediately available Thursday evening. The victim has since been released from the hospital and is cooperating with investigators.
Online records available to the public show that Rogers stands at 6 feet, 1 inch, and weighs just over 200 pounds. He has skulls tattooed throughout his arms.
He’s also been in and out of prison.
He’s a Tier 2 registered sex offender in Nevada — midlevel between least likely to reoffend and most dangerous, records show.
This followed a 2002 lewdness and attempted lewdness with a child conviction and prison time. A judge ordered lifetime supervision, Clark County District Court logs show.
But he’s failed to maintain that commitment. In 2007, he was charged with failing to register with law enforcement. Six years later, he pleaded guilty to one count of attempting prohibited acts by a sex offender, logs show. In 2016, a charge of violating lifetime supervision as a sex offender was dismissed.
He’s also not a stranger to burglary. In 2011, he pleaded guilty and was convicted on an incident for which he was arrested two years prior, logs show.
Now, he is being housed without bail at the Clark County Detention Center on counts of attempted murder, sex assault, kidnapping, battery to commit sexual assault, burglary and robbery, jail logs show. He will appear in court on Aug. 7.
