A 15-year-old boy who had just arrived in Las Vegas to stay with his father was shot and killed inside a Kepler Drive apartment after what homicide detectives later determined was reckless play-fighting with a handgun among a group of teenagers. The victim, identified in arrest reports as James Lobue Jr., had been reported missing as a runaway by police in Bismarck, North Dakota, weeks before he turned up in Las Vegas and was killed.
According to arrest reports reviewed by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Lobue had traveled from North Dakota after being reported missing there in August 2024 and had only recently arrived at his father’s residence in Las Vegas before the fatal shooting. Detectives determined the shooting stemmed from play-fighting with a firearm among teenagers gathered inside the apartment, where suspect Browdy Lee Shaffer had allegedly been showing off the weapon during a video call just before it discharged, the paper reported.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department communications received 911 calls reporting that a male juvenile had been shot inside an apartment unit in the 6900 block of Kepler Drive, near East Carey Avenue and North Hollywood Boulevard, according to LVMPD records. Emergency medical responders transported the teen to the trauma center at University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, where hospital physicians pronounced him dead. UMC operates the state’s only Level I Adult Trauma Center, treating more than 14,000 trauma patients a year across a 10,000-square-mile service area, per the UNLV Emergency Medicine Residency program.
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LVMPD’s homicide section assumed control of the crime scene and processed ballistic evidence recovered inside the residence, according to police records. Arrest reports noted that after the gun was fired, Shaffer initially attempted to render aid to Lobue before fleeing the apartment complex alongside his brother ahead of police arriving on scene, per the Review-Journal’s reporting…