A man acting erratically and shooting a rifle from the yard of his Pahrump home was shot and killed Thursday night by an officer he pointed his weapon at, according to the Nye County Sheriff’s Office.
Before being mortally wounded, Jason Paul O’Bannon, 46, fired and reloaded his .30-30 Winchester lever-action rifle multiple times, Sheriff Sharon Wehrly said Friday in a briefing broadcast online.
Lt. David Boruchowitz said O’Bannon had pointed the rifle at deputies and fired “all over” the place. The chaotic exchange was partly captured on police-worn cameras.
By the time deputies arrived at North Kelso Way, it’d been the third time they responded to O’Bannon’s desert dwelling in less than 10 hours Thursday, Wehrly said.
That morning they were dispatched to an incident in which a neighborhood mailbox had been allegedly damaged by O’Bannon, Wehrly said. Deputies knocked on his door, but no one answered.
At about 7:40 p.m., deputies were there again when residents reported a man yelling and driving a car erratically around the property, Wehrly said.
Within 40 minutes, multiple residents reported gunshot blasts coming from O’Bannon’s yard, Wehrly said. Immediately after deputies arrived, he began screaming at them and pulling the trigger.
That’s when a SWAT team responded at about 8:30 p.m., Wehrly said. Officers had pleaded with O’Bannon to surrender, but he insisted “that that was not going to happen” and kept shooting, Wehrly said.
At 9:23 p.m., O’Bannon pointed the rifle one last time, Wehrly said. Facing the suspect’s barrel, Wesley Fancher, a SWAT member and detective, fired four times.
O’Bannon died at a local hospital, Wehrly said. He has an extensive criminal history that spans two decades, including violent crimes in Las Vegas, she said.
Fancher, 34, who’s been with the Nye County Sheriff’s Office for eight years, was placed on routine paid administrative leave, Wehrly said. The agency has tapped the Nevada Investigation Division to assist in the probe.
If O’Bannon had survived, his charges would have included seven counts of assault with a deadly weapon on an officer, and discharging a gun across the roadway, Wehrly said.
Residents in the area had to hunker down in homes during the shooting, Wehrly said.