A transient man who told investigators homeless people should be “put down” was charged with three counts of murder in connection with a spate of fatal shootings that occurred in North Las Vegas on Monday, court records show.
Tristan Tidwell was booked Wednesday at the North Las Vegas Police Department Detention Center after he admitted to police that he fatally shot three men and a dog in unrelated incidents, according to his arrest report.
The shootings all took place within a span of about three hours, and detectives located Tidwell in the 3500 block of Mercury Street, near Civic Center Drive and Gowan Road, near the location of one of the shootings, according to the arrest report.
After Tidwell was stopped by officers, he gave them consent to search his backpack, and they recovered a 9 mm handgun, whose rounds would likely match those found at the scene of the dog shooting. Shell casings were not recovered in any of the shootings involving the three men, according to the arrest report.
Tidwell was taken into custody and told investigators he shot at the dog and said “you need to get rid of it (the dog) because it did not have a home; anything without a home gets terminated,” according to the report.
After shooting at the dog, Tidwell said he walked past a casino on the 2100 block of Las Vegas Boulevard North, near Lake Mead Boulevard, and shot a homeless man there in the back of the neck, consistent with what investigators found when responding to the scene, according to the report.
Tidwell said after he shot the man at the casino he walked north on Hamilton Street from Las Vegas Boulevard and made his way to Civic Center Drive near Cheyenne Avenue. Tidwell said he saw another man he “had to put down” and demonstrated to detectives that he shot a second victim on the “middle-upper” portion of the upper back, consistent with what responding officers found at the scene.
Tidwell told detectives after shooting the man on Civic Center Drive that he “just walked away” and admitted to killing a third person, according to the report. A third body was found on Mary Dee Avenue, northeast of where the second victim was shot.
Tidwell said he shot the third man in the back near the left shoulder, which matched what investigators found responding to the scene, according to the arrest report.
Investigators asked Tidwell if his gun properly ejected shell casings or if it malfunctioned at all. Tidwell called the gun “a piece of junk” and had to manually cycle the gun after firing it multiple times but couldn’t recall if he had to cycle it after each shooting, according to the report.
Police said throughout the interview with Tidwell that he incoherently talked about the need to build a bank, “shut it down,” and prison guards and police, who exist to “restrict freedom,” along with “free humans versus slave humans,” according to the arrest report. Detectives asked Tidwell if he thought the shooting was right, to which Tidwell said, “Oh no, it’s wrong. It’s against the law. But it has to be done.”
Tidwell has an arraignment hearing scheduled for Monday, court records show. A lawyer for Tidwell was not listed on the court docket.