Robert Trayvon Sykes, a 28-year-old Black/African American man, was fatally shot during a confrontation inside a residence in the Spring Valley area of the Las Vegas Valley on February 12, 2026. The shooting unfolded shortly after midnight in the 9200 block of Desert Village Avenue, near Flamingo Road and Fort Apache Road. Police said Sykes was the boyfriend of a woman who was inside the residence and that the person accused of shooting him was her father.
The first indication that
something had gone terribly wrong came through an emergency call from Sykes' girlfriend. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officials said dispatchers received a 911 call from a woman reporting that her boyfriend had just been shot. Only seconds later, another 911 call came in. This time, the caller was the woman's father, who told authorities that he had just shot his daughter's boyfriend. The two calls gave responding officers an unusually direct account of what had occurred before they even reached the house.
Investigators said the shooting followed a verbal argument between Sykes and his girlfriend's father. Authorities did not publicly disclose what started the disagreement or what the two were arguing about. During the confrontation, police said, the father produced a firearm and shot Sykes. Some early reporting described the alleged shooter as being in his late 50s. Police characterized the episode as an isolated domestic confrontation rather than a random attack and said there was no continuing danger to the surrounding neighborhood.
When officers arrived, the girlfriend's father remained at the residence and was taken into custody without incident. Police then went inside and found Sykes on the floor suffering from gunshot wounds. Officers and emergency personnel provided assistance before Sykes was transported to University Medical Center. Despite efforts to save him, he died from his injuries at the hospital. The Clark County coroner's office subsequently identified him and determined that he died from gunshot wounds to the torso.
A juvenile was also reported to have been inside the residence when the shooting occurred. Police said the child was not involved in the confrontation and was not physically injured. Child Protective Services was reportedly notified following the incident.
The girlfriend's father was taken into police custody immediately after the shooting, and contemporary reports described him as having been arrested in connection with Sykes' death. His own 911 call, in which he reportedly acknowledged shooting his daughter's boyfriend, became an important part of the initial homicide investigation. Detectives with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's Homicide Section took over the case and worked to determine the circumstances surrounding the argument, the gunfire, and whether any additional factors preceded the shooting.
Publicly available reporting identified the accused shooter by his relationship to Sykes but did not provide his name. The reports located also did not establish specific criminal charges subsequently filed against him or document a later plea, trial, dismissal, sentencing, or conviction. The last publicly detailed accounts of the case described the girlfriend's father as being in custody while homicide detectives continued investigating the fatal confrontation.
