Loy Smith, 56, a Black male, was visiting friends in a neighborhood near North Las Vegas Boulevard when the quiet of the early morning broke on April 18, 2007. Around 4:40 a.m., a woman called 911 reporting a man being beaten near Cecile Avenue and Clifford Street, just east of Pecos Road. Officers found Smith on the ground, bleeding; he was rushed to University Medical Center, where he died.
Police described the attack as a robbery that turned deadly, the darkness punctured for an instant by the headlights of a passing car that briefly lit up the scene. In that flash, witnesses saw two men, then saw them run.
Detectives worked the case in the days that followed, canvassing the area and appealing for tips, but contemporary reporting did not announce any arrests. Accounts from that week emphasized the suddenness of the assault, the narrow residential streets where Smith had gone to see friends, and the two suspects who vanished into the neighborhood after being startled by the approaching vehicle. Subsequent public summaries of the case have continued to describe a fatal street robbery with two fleeing assailants and no publicly reported resolution.
