He was 15 years old and male. His name was Xabier Etchart, and on July 19, 2021, he joined a small group in the desert outside Laughlin, Nevada, near Needles Highway and Bruce Woodbury Drive, to shoot at a makeshift range. They had been out there for roughly three-quarters of an hour when, according to witnesses, an adult in the group rested a rifle on the back of a truck and kept a finger on the trigger while talking.
As someone climbed down from the truck, the firearm slipped; the gun fired, and the round struck Xabier in the head. He was rushed to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center in Las Vegas, where he died eight days later of a gunshot wound.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police arrested 42-year-old Kiley Seydlitz that same day. At first, detectives booked him on an open murder count and two counts of child abuse, as court records also showed he had prior felony convictions out of Missouri and was on probation at the time. The arrest report described his conduct with the rifle as reckless and detailed the witness statements about how the gun fell and discharged.
Over the following months, the case shifted from a murder prosecution to an acknowledgement of a fatal, unlawful lapse with a firearm. In November 2021, Seydlitz pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and to ownership or possession of a gun by a prohibited person. On January 21, 2022, a Clark County judge sentenced him to a term of two to seven years in prison. In court, the judge addressed Xabier’s mother directly, noting that while the tragedy read like an accident, its consequences were irreversible.
Public memorial listings recorded Xabier’s killing on the date of the shooting in Laughlin, while contemporaneous incident logs placed the scene in the desert corridor by Bruce Woodbury Drive and Needles Highway, aligning with the investigative narrative later presented in court. Together, those records and the court outcome trace a straight, sorrowful line: a day of target shooting that turned in an instant into a homicide case, an arrest, and ultimately a conviction and prison sentence for the man whose mishandling of a gun cost a teenager his life.
