Friday, Feb. 1, 2019 | 2 a.m.
Jonathon Louis Burgos
For Jonathon Louis Burgos, relocating to Las Vegas was a reset of sorts — “a new atmosphere.”
And though he may have left much behind in Southern California about two years ago, he brought along the personality of a fun, caring family man, according to his sister.
“He was just so happy, he wanted everybody else to be happy,” Michelle Cattledge said Thursday, three weeks after his killing.
In an effort to recover his motorcycle, which his sister said was stolen, Burgos was confronted by Kayla Biron, an ex-girlfriend.
Biron followed Burgos as he pushed the bike down an alley in the 200 block of West New York Avenue. She kept a short-pump shotgun pointed at him, according to Metro Police.
Kayla Biron
Then she pulled the trigger. Burgos was 36.
Identified as a suspect, Biron remained on the lam until her arrest Monday, police said. She is jailed on a murder count.
Burgos, a Los Angeles transplant, moved to the valley to “get his life together,” Cattledge said. Las Vegas offered new jobs and opportunities. It also was a chance to be closer to his siblings, she added.
He got by doing landscaping and handyman work, Cattledge said.
But family was always first. Cattledge remembers phone calls in which her brother inquired, “Hey, do you want to see me today?”
Be it a yes or no, she would step outside her home and there he was. “Family sticks together,” his sister remembers him saying.
“To lose my brother, who was a very important part of my life,” Cattledge said, is a “tragic loss.”
Their father died when they were kids, their mother in 2012, and their sister two years after that, Cattledge said. Is seems like there’s a “death in the family every year,” she added.
Burgos loved music — especially oldies from the '40s and '50s — art, tattoos and anything outdoors, Cattledge said.
Once, she said, he took part in a King of the Cage amateur fight. Though he didn’t win, he was satisfied trying.
He was loud and boisterous, she added. “He hated to stay still.”
Tinkering with motorcycles became a hobby after he bought one.
That’s the bike Cattledge said was stolen by Biron and her associates.
Learning his bike's whereabouts, he and a group — including his girlfriend — hopped in a pickup truck to track it down, according to Cattledge and police.
The suspect and the victim had clashed frequently in the past, and an argument broke out when he showed up.
It wasn’t clear what happened, but police and Cattledge said that Biron followed her victim as he pushed the motorcycle through the alley.
The pickup truck had its tailgate open, ready for loading. The group that accompanied Burgos waited.
Cattledge said her brother kept turning to look at Biron then back at his girlfriend, appearing worried.
“I believe he was scared,” Cattledge said, noting that her brother rarely showed fear.
And he didn’t.
Police said that before the fatal round, he challenged Biron, saying something along the lines of “if she was going to shoot him to do it already,” a detective wrote in an arrest warrant.
Burgos and his brother had dreamed of starting a towing business, just like their father had.
