A man accused of stealing a car in southwest Las Vegas and then forcing his way into a second vehicle in Henderson was taken into custody Tuesday after a chase that stretched across the valley and ended in a neighborhood near Green Valley Parkway and Robindale Road.
Metro officials say officers were investigating a stolen vehicle on the 7000 block of South Rainbow Boulevard when they located the car around 11:19 a.m. The suspect exited the vehicle and sped off from the scene before officers could make contact, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Rather than immediately pursue on the ground, officers relied on an air unit to follow the suspect from above.
That decision lines up with standard Metro procedure, which calls for officers to request helicopter tracking and give the Air Support Unit time to get overhead before ground units move in on a stolen vehicle, according to a department pursuit policy document. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s Air Support Unit flies five helicopters up to 20 hours a day across Clark County, and it assisted in 127 pursuits and 438 stolen vehicle recoveries last year, per the agency’s own figures.
A Second, Forceful Carjacking Changes the Equation
The suspect eventually stole another vehicle by force, allegedly grabbing it at a business on the 2300 block of Paseo Verde Parkway in Henderson, police said. That location sits near the District at Green Valley Ranch, roughly 15 miles southeast of where the pursuit began on South Rainbow Boulevard, according to BaseLocal’s local reporting. A photo caption accompanying the Review-Journal’s report also describes the suspect as having allegedly stolen a delivery van during the chase…