A man’s wife held him down while her brother bludgeoned him to death with a hatchet during a Las Vegas holiday trip gone horribly wrong, police said.
Officers found the as-yet-unidentified Idaho man dead with multiple traumatic wounds at around 2:30 a.m. Monday near Buffalo Drive and Eldora Ave.,
according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
Maria Hernandez, 33, also of Idaho, is accused of assisting Hector Gutierrez, 23, of California, with the murder of her husband, cops said. Authorities charged the sister-brother pair with murder with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit murder and incarcerated them in the Clark County Detention Center.
Law enforcement officials
told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that Hernandez and her spouse were waiting on maintenance for their 2002 silver Ford Windstar when Gutierrez launched the hatchet attack.
Hernandez told police that a carjacker had attacked her husband, but homicide investigators later alleged she had Gutierrez’s assistance with murdering him,
KSNV-TV reported.
Her brother sped away from the scene in the minivan, which officers found roughly 10 miles east of there, according to the Review-Journal. Gutierrez received treatment for a non-life-threatening stab wound at University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, police said.
Cops haven’t released booking photos of Hernandez and Gutierrez. The Clark County Coroner’s Office will perform an autopsy of the man on Tuesday,
KTVB-TV reported.
Officials in the coroner’s office plan to disclose the man’s identity, along with the cause and manner of his death, police said.