Do you know who killed Rhonda? Rhonda Ballow, 27, an African-American woman, was found shot to death on the morning of December 27, 2017, behind a business in the 2900 block of West Washington Avenue near Rancho Drive in central Las Vegas. She and a man in his fifties had set up for the night in a loading-dock area; detectives believe a shooter approached after midnight and fired six to eight continuous shots while walking toward them. When officers were called just after 7 a.m., both victims were beyond help.
The coroner later ruled Ballow’s death a homicide from multiple gunshot wounds.
Investigators pieced together surveillance footage and witness accounts pointing to a suspect who, according to an arrest report, told a neighbor he had killed two people behind the swap meet because one was a registered sex offender and the woman refused to leave him. That account, along with security video and statements from people living nearby, led detectives to identify 32-year-old Michael Thompson. He was arrested on January 16, 2018, near the 2200 block of Sleepy Court and booked into the Clark County Detention Center on two counts of murder with a deadly weapon; prosecutors charged him with two counts of murder soon after.
From the first hours of the case, police emphasized the starkness of the scene: two people sheltering on a mattress, attacked without provocation, the pattern of shell casings marking the shooter’s path forward. As the case moved from identification to arrest, those details hardened into a narrative of targeted violence—an encounter sparked, investigators say, by the killer’s professed hatred of sex offenders that left Ballow dead where she slept.
