Jessica Tolentino
After kicking in the front door of his ex-girlfriend’s west valley house early Wednesday and fatally shooting a man inside, the gunman dragged the woman by the hair and drove her to a secondary address where a female suspect helped restrain her, according to a Metro Police arrest report released today.
During the drive, Joseph Louis Fernandez, 28, struck blows to the woman’s head, police said. And when she attempted to exit the BMW, he pointed the gun, telling her “she was going to be killed next if she didn’t stop screaming.”
Wednesday’s crime spree was the zenith to a tumultuous and violent relationship in which Fernandez victimized the woman who had gone through legal resources to keep him away, police accounts and court documents show.
During Wednesday’s early hours, Fernandez showed up to the house his former girlfriend used to share with him in the 3300 block of Robin Nest Court, near Desert Inn Road and Hualapai Way, police said. She had an active restraining order and multiple police reports against him, police said.
After kicking in the door, Fernandez opened fire, pumping multiple rounds into Terrell Thomas Jones, who later died at University Medical Center, police said.
That’s when Fernandez kidnapped his ex-girlfriend and took her to an apartment on Tropicana Avenue, near Decatur Boulevard, police said. There, he woke up Jessica Tolentino-Arciga, 26, who helped him restrain the victim, police said.
They forced the victim into a bedroom and held her down on a bed, with Fernandez telling Tolentino-Arciga that he’d shot someone and that he would go back to the crime scene to see if police had responded, according to the report.
Fernandez left the apartment and so did Tolentino-Arciga, who said she was going to a gas station, police said.
Being left alone, the victim escaped and call 911 from a nearby pharmacy, police said. When the suspects returned to the complex, they were unable to locate the victim.
Sometime later, the female suspect was taken into custody at the complex and Fernandez was spotted by a police helicopter as he drove erratically near Russell Road and Jones Boulevard, according to the report.
Patrol officers spun Fernandez’s BMW and arrested him near Tropicana and Interstate 15, police said.
Fernandez and Tolentino-Arciga are being held without bail at the Clark County Detention Center, jail logs show.