On a December evening in Las Vegas in 2015, a grim discovery was made inside an apartment near Jackson Avenue and B Street. Thirty-eight-year-old DeAndre Leggett was found shot to death in the kitchen, the victim of a triple homicide that also claimed the lives of Charlita Lashunda Carroll, 35, and Morty Cornell Young, 37. The scene was described by police as a senseless shooting, with all three victims having been shot at close range with a handgun.
Leggett had sustained multiple gunshot wounds.
Investigators quickly suspected the slayings were the result of a robbery connected to the drug trade, as drug paraphernalia was discovered at the scene. Police indicated there appeared to have been no struggle, just a rapid series of shots that left the three individuals lifeless on the floor. Witnesses reported seeing a tall man, approximately 6-foot-4 and dressed in black, running from the apartment through a nearby alley shortly after the shooting. An older, dark red or burgundy van with a tan stripe along its side was also seen leaving the area after the incident. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's narcotics and gang intelligence detectives, along with the FBI Violent Crime Task Force, became involved in the investigation.
Months later, the investigation led to a suspect. In March 2016, Gerald Pointer, then 38, was arrested in Chicago on unrelated charges of parole violation and robbery. While in custody, he was identified as the sole suspect in the triple homicide. Pointer was extradited to Nevada and indicted on a host of charges, including three counts of murder with a deadly weapon, burglary, robbery with a deadly weapon, and being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm. The indictment alleged that Pointer had robbed the apartment, stealing money and/or cocaine before shooting the three occupants.
In March 2020, to avoid a potential death penalty, Gerald Pointer, then 42, accepted a plea deal. He entered an Alford plea to three counts of second-degree murder, a type of plea where the defendant does not admit guilt but acknowledges that prosecutors have enough evidence to likely secure a conviction. As a result of the plea agreement, he faced a sentence of 20 to 50 years in prison.
