Everyone remembers the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles.

Almost no one knows what happened next.

Fright Night: The 30 Days of Riots Las Vegas Doesn’t Talk About

What this episode covers:

• The overlooked Las Vegas riots following the Rodney King verdict
• Why the unrest lasted 30 days, not just one night
• The role of gangs, media, and delayed response
• How close rioters came to downtown Las Vegas
• Firsthand accounts from officers under fire
• Lessons learned that changed policing going forward

👤 Guests:

• Lt. Governor Stavros Anthony – Nevada Lieutenant Governor, former Metro Police Captain, author of Knights of Fire
• David Radcliffe – Metro officer on the front lines
• Eddie Kravetz – Metro sergeant, community policing specialist
• David Sheppard – Former FBI agent, brought armored vehicle support

🔥 Key moments:

• Rioters stopped just short of Fremont Street
• Officers taking sustained gunfire
• Firefighters targeted while responding to fires
• Gangs coordinating attacks
• Armored vehicle deployed under fire

📚 Mentioned:

• Knights of Fire by Stavros Anthony

📣 Connect:

• Email: Heidi@VegasCrimeFiles.com
• Follow & subscribe: Vegas Crime Files

For nearly 30 days, Las Vegas descended into chaos—fires, ambushes, and more than a thousand rounds fired at police, firefighters, and civilians.

In this special episode of Vegas Crime Files, Heidi Harris sits down with Nevada Lieutenant Governor Stavros Anthony—who documented the events—and three officers who were on the front lines.

They describe:

• The night hundreds of rioters marched toward downtown
• The moment officers made a stand just blocks from Fremont Street
• What it was like taking gunfire from all directions
• How gangs that normally fought each other joined forces
• And why the situation spiraled before it was finally shut down

This isn’t history from a textbook—it’s firsthand from the people who lived it.

A major chapter of Las Vegas history… that most people never even knew happened.

Transcript:

“Rodney King riots in Los Angeles for a couple of 3 days in Las Vegas, there were 30 days.

We got cars on fire turned over in the street.

I mean, it looks like Baghdad.

I think the only reason they stopped is because they ran out of bullets.”

I don't know if you knew this because a lot of people didn't, but after the Rodney King verdict, in California, you heard about the Rodney King riots in L.A.?

Did you know there were Rodney King riots in Vegas that went on for a month on the west side of town?

Members of the media were attacked.

Obviously, regular citizens were attacked, and nobody ever heard about it.

Now at the time, our current lieutenant governor, Stavros Anthony, was on the police department.

It was asked to write a report about what happened.

The events that transpired, every minute of the events, and lessons learned.

Now this report was subsequently used in police departments all over the country.

He's now put the report out in book form.

He'll join us 1st on the podcast today, and then we'll be joined by 3 police officers who were actually there in the riots, dodging bullets, dodging bats, dodging bricks right in the thick of things.

You don't want to miss a minute of this podcast.

Vegas crime files is brought to you by wealthcare, healthcare that pays you back.

Joining me now is retired metro captain, and now current, lieutenant governor of the state of Nevada, Stavros Anthony, who wrote the book about these crazy Rodney King riots.

Thanks for being here, and let everybody know, 1st of all, what a lieutenant governor actually does.

Great to be with you, Heidi.

Yeah, so most people don't actually know what the what I do is Nevada lieutenant governor, so I'll just go through it real quick so people understand what I do and if they have any questions or issues involved in the state.

I the person of contact.

So, I'm the 2nd highest constitutional office in the state of Nevada.

There's the governor, lieutenant governor, uh, controller, treasurer, attorney general, uh, and secretary of state.

During the legislative session, I'm the president of the Senate.

So, uh, as you know, once every 2 years for 120 days.

The, uh, Legislature comes together in Carson City.

So I move up there and I run the floor sessions in the Senate.

I only vote if there's a tie, but I make sure that the rules are followed.

And it's kind of a check and balance that the framers of the Constitution put in.

Uh, outside of that, I'm the uh, chairman of the Nevada tourism commission, so I promote tourism, uh, not only in Las Vegas and Nevada, but all over the state, Elco, Tonapah, Ely, Winnemucca.

So I travel the state quite a bit to promote tourism, not only for visitors, but for our residents.

I want our residents to discover Nevada.

I am the chair of the Nevada outdoor recreation advisory board, so we work to make sure we have a robust outdoor recreation environment for people, not only for Nevadans, but for visitors.

I am the vice chair of the Nevada Board of Transportation.

Make sure they're uh, they're engineered correctly and they uh, keep up with capacity.

I am on the governor's office of economic development, where we try to diversify our economy.

Uh, really primarily by from non-gaming companies trying to get 9 gaming companies to come to Nevada so we can diversify our economy.

I support small businesses And beyond that, I can kind of do whatever the heck I want.

So I wasn't involved in any of the I didn't respond to any of the civil unrest.

I was in a position to be a 1st responder or detective.

Um, but, um, I watched it kind of unfold, uh, just by talking to officers that were involved in it.

And, uh, but I don't think really anybody had a grasp of what was happening during really a month-long period.

Um, including you, as you just mentioned.

And when it was all said and done, everything kind of went away.

Nobody really cared much anymore.

And then the undersheriff at the time, uh, Eric Cooper contacted me and, uh, he knew I was a pretty good writer and researcher.

So he asked me to put together a very formalized report on exactly what happened because he didn't want this to go away.

So, um, I spent about 6 months uh, putting the report together.

It was uh, uh, lots of interviews, a lot of documents.

Uh, and and when I was done.

I really didn't, didn't understand until the report was done exactly what happened.

And, uh, we put it together.

We sent it out to a lot of places, mostly law enforcement agencies because the last chapters, titled lessons learned, so we wanted to let other departments know, some of the good, the bad, and the ugly, that occurs during civil unrest.

And people were kind of shocked because the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles were a couple of 3 days in Las Vegas, there were 30 days.

I wrote that report in 92, 34 years ago.

I said, you know what?

Let me ask a few people if they even know this happened and nobody did.

So I decided to write a book to put it in actual book form.

Uh, you could purchase on Amazon.

It's only $10.

And if you're interested in the uh, a significant piece of history that happened in Las Vegas, as you know, there's been a lot of civil unrest, um, that's occurring by these Antifa thugs, and uh, the last chapter again is a good reminder to police departments, how they can, uh, handle civil unrest, and maybe they're already doing it, which is good.

So, um, it was good to get this book out and and let people learn a little history about the, uh, some really bad things that happened in Las Vegas.

Nobody knew anything was going to happen in Las Vegas.

Nobody really thought anything would happen in Las Vegas.

So the kind of the day unfolded as normal.

And it was primarily focused on the west side of Las Vegas, which at the time was primarily black.

There was a lot of public housing.

Um, A lot of good people lived there, but there were a lot of gang members that lived there.

There was a lot of narcotics activity, a lot of, you know, pretty significant crime.

It culminated in all these gang members, 100s of them. Marching towards down bonanza.

And the only reason they did it is because a group of police officers stood their ground under that overpass and turned into, as you mentioned, hand-to-hand combat where these police officers were not going to let these gangsters make it to City Hall and cause personal and property damage, and you just have to think of the the heroics of these men and women that stood there and said they're not getting past us.

And again, for a police officer not to get killed when that happened is just absolutely a miracle.

You also discovered how the gangs came together.

Gangs who normally hated each other, came together to try to kill cops.

You know, prior to that, the, uh, it was primarily the bloods in the Crips, those were the 2 main, uh, uh, uh, gangs that were on the west side.

And actually, that was primarily the way it was in Los Angeles too.

And they would fight each other all the time.

They would, you know, fight, kill each other.

They fight for turf, drug turf, and for them to come together.

Um, as as a group was as absolutely unbelievable that that actually happened and they came together, as you mentioned, in order to kill white people in order to cause chaos and actually go after police officers.

And you had situations that we found out where blood and crypt gang members from Los Angeles came to Las Vegas to help them organize, organize together.

And, uh, you know, the, the, after the 1st night, you know, what, what occurred was you had police officers and the police departments trying to negotiate with these gang members to get them to calm down, to get them to stop from fighting with the police to get them from, uh, to quit burning, you know, burning down their neighborhoods and terrorizing the residents that live there.

So there was a lot of diplomacy, a lot of talk, a lot of elected officials involved and it didn't work.

Shocking.

Negotiating with gang members doesn't work.

Thank you, Stavros, for the book.

Thank you for what you've done for Nevada for all these years.

I will link this in the description for anybody who wants to get a copy of it.

Thank you, Heidi.

Joining me now is David Radcliffe.

He was right in the middle of these Rodney King riots, dodging bullets and everything else.

When did you 1st realize things potentially were going to go arrive or at what point did anybody in your area or above you or anything expressed concern that it might get crazy?

I was working downtown.

And we got reports that there are 200 plus people rioters heading toward the downtown casinos.

So we formed a skirmish line right at, um, Maine and Bonanza with, uh, Getty Cravets was right next to me.

That was a big deal too, because you guys basically had to go across the street and prevent them from going downtown because that was their plan.

That was their plan.

That night just got worse and worse.

There was a lot of inaction.

Staff trying to decide what to do in my view way, took way, way, way too long.

And at the point we were sitting, I think it was Lake Mead and Rancho.

The nucleus plaza was where it was really breaking out, right?

Yeah, we saw it.

We saw it there and they wouldn't let us do anything.

And they're like looting the nucleus plaza.

They're like, what are we going to do?

And wait, wait, wait, you know, for, uh, the brass to decide what to do.

And a member, Mike McClary, looking at me and go, hey, he's like, well, we find out word we're going to go down their former rest teams and grab these guys.

I'm like, yeah, it's too late.

I remember, Mike, look at me.

I go, turn around, look, and there's a column of smoke, coming out of nucleus plaza.

Wow.

And that was the 1st place that they set on fire.

And then, of course, they set the Arco AM PM across the street on fire.

They set the bar across the street from that. Were over there.

Uh, we started taking fire from, I think that was Madison Terrace and from the gas station area.

I was around engine, I believe it was engine 4 from the city fire department.

They took a round off the front bumper.

Of course, we had to get out of there.

They had a firefighter.

I can't remember who that was.

Um, that they had a rough collapse.

They trapped his ankle.

So he had to, uh, get that beam off his ankle to get him out of there, and then the fire truck went westbound, uh, with the hand lines and, uh, everything attached to it because no ability to, you know, uh, do anything with the lines that just had to get out of there.

Wow.

And that's kind of how all of that started.

You know, when you don't, when you let things get out of control because I'm not getting any help from the local police department, then it gets worse and worse.

So later that night, Ralph Ray got shot.

Um, he was in a, we had formed into 4 man units.

You know, as a mobile field force, uh, Ralph was driving a 4 man unit and took, uh, Around in front of the Gerson, Lake Meade, and uh, MLK through his left, kind of the bicep tricep area in his upper arm.

There's a big artery there.

And he was pumping.

Blood out.

And, um, we had headed up that way.

Uh, to go help, and as we rounded that corner, uh, the shooter laid down a base of fire.

Wow.

That was where apex in the corner.

Shot up both of our front tires.

I took 3 rounds out off my door.

Thankfully, we had enough of an angle where they bounced off the door, but, Kind of unnerving to hear, you know, bullets impacting your door.

And then a couple more hit the car as we kept driving west toward Fiesta and Texas Station.

They're not there anymore, but there were 2 casinos there.

And we're on the hubs.

Um, There's no rubber left on the tires.

So we're just sliding around.

And then we had to get other units out there to pull security and actually borrow somebody else's tire, you know, spare.

So we put changed tires and just went back to work.

But we got cars on fire turned over in the street.

I mean, it looks like Baghdad. 35 police cars hit by gunfire, 6 fire trucks.

I know North Las Vegas took a round off there.

They had a snorkel at the time.

They had a big project up at Lake Meade, and they're fighting the fire and.

Took a round off the bucket.

Uh, with a firefighter in it.

I mean, it just totally out of control.

What did that firefighter ever do?

He's putting out a fire.

Right. In their complex.

And they're shooting at him.

Yeah, the whole, that was nuts.

This is a Captain Russell Marshand in North Las Vegas fire department.

You're talking about 40 feet in the air and trying to do the right thing by the neighborhood and getting bullets sent his way.

I mean, it's astounding to me.

Um, And I remember rolling in like west of the Gerson.

Um, You know, we rolled in with 10 4 man units and they had like 6 dudes.

So they're like, 0 my God, thank God they're here.

Now we got enough guys.

Because that's essentially what happens.

You don't have enough people there and then the mob mentality rules.

You know, they can get one over till there's enough police officers there to where, you know, they find another place to be, far as I know.

Uh, Whitey Franks, who was the lieutenant at the time, uh, took it upon himself to, Form a unit of some guys, and they went into the Gerson after the guys had shot Ralph and shot up our car, and I believe Whitey or one of his guys actually shot the, uh, the person been doing the shooting.

If you can tell, I'm not very happy to this day about the inaction of staff.

I mean, they they didn't do much and I, best of best of my knowledge, Whitey took it upon himself to do that.

Well, good for him.

There was a quote in here about Whitey talking about, apparently he had considerable experience fighting in Vietnam.

He called Vietnam skate compared to what was happening that night.

There was so much gunfire.

Just an incredible amount of gunfire there at the Gerson.

Remember when they got on the radio and said, if you've been in a shooting, just doing all search report.

I remember guys running that ammo.

Who wants to go play policeman with no ammunition?

So tell me about the stand that you and a couple of dozen other officers made to prevent these thugs from getting downtown and what could have happened had they been successful?

Oh my god.

Um, I, I, if we had not stopped them there, they were already under the bridge and they had gotten right to Main Street, you would have had security guards trying to protect their property, and I can just imagine the utter chaos that would have been.

Yeah.

What else you need to know?

You shoot up 35 cars and 6 fire trucks.

Uh, they're pretty actively trying to kill you.

There's a detective Landino quoted here in the book, and he said, I thought I was going to be killed because there were people walking around the area carrying guns within a few feet of their vehicle, and, you know, it doesn't take much to trap somebody in a car.

Well, Eddie Landino, when he was in uniform, worked the west side for years.

So he knew a lot of those people.

And he still felt like that and unfortunately, I believe Eddie's been dead a few years.

People don't get this, you know, it's like, I came from Chicago and the projects.

I mean, they talk about crime.

You don't know what the crime is.

I mean, that's, you know, reported crime.

They got to go live back there.

So you really want to side with the cops while that's going on.

Yeah.

Really?

How you think that's going to work out at home?

What were some of the most obvious changes you saw in the department after this whole mess?

I'll tell you this, we weren't allowed to have rifles.

Back then.

So after all the cars got shot up, everybody brought their rifles to work the next day.

Wow.

And they're like, you can't have them.

And then, you know, what the guy said is, I don't care.

I don't feel like dying.

Right.

So go ahead and discipline me, but I'm keeping my rifle.

The change was, is that you can't wait to respond.

And I'll just say it.

You know, this is the reluctance to act when they're black people.

Well, I don't know why, and I couldn't care less if you're purple with horns.

I got to treat.

I will treat you exactly the same way.

There's one way.

We don't treat different races differently.

Right.

But the reluctance to engage with African-American people because our African-American is crazy to me.

You know, you get a police shooting and it's a white guy, it's nothing.

You shoot a black guy all of a sudden there's outrage.

I mean, why do we play into that?

I just do not get that.

Yeah, Lieutenant Charlie David Davis at the time said the sheriff has said it appears the dialogue between the community leaders, elected officials, the people responsible for the unrest in the community, has not worked.

We're going to be more aggressive in dealing with groups congregating for unlawful purposes.

To your point, that should have been done from day one.

Yeah, Charlie's right.

Thank you, David, for what you did back then.

Thank you for what you continue to do right here in Las Vegas to this day to benefit our community.

Appreciate your time.

Now you're very welcome.

Heidi, always here for you.

We're now joined by retired Metro Sergeant Eddie Cravettes.

He spent 26 years on Metro.

He was involved in field training.

He was a detective, did backgrounds on people.

He worked in fraud and financial crimes toward the end of his career.

He also worked in something that's really important and pertinent to our conversation.

He worked in what they called line solution policing, primarily in what is still called the west side of Las Vegas, where the Rodney King riots broke out.

So here's a guy who knows the people, knows the neighborhood, was working very hard to keep that neighborhood going well, and he tells us what line solution policing is.

Uh, it was really, it was a joint effort between the police and the community to solve problems that both the police and the community perceived his problems.

And so we were hand in hand, you know, doing those types of things for, you know, better quality of life for all.

Now, how was that going prior to the Rodney King riots?

I think it was going pretty good.

So you had to be one of the most surprised people when you saw how quickly things turned ugly on the west side of Las Vegas on during what they call fright night.

We were working over there, so we were assigned over there with myself and my squad, and there was some bus that had a, a boulder throwing through it.

They threw it through the bus window, the front window.

As the bus driver was driving, causing the was totally shattered.

So I had boarded the bus and the bus was filled with mentally challenged, uh, young, I don't know, children, maybe adolescent, and they made.

What time of day was this that this happened?

Probably around 3.30, 430 in the afternoon.

They were they were still on the bus.

The bus was just stopped.

They were just so afraid and they were they were mentally challenged.

So, to many degrees, and so you have a lot of children on there who were somewhat crippled and they couldn't walk and they, some of them couldn't speak.

But then they were jumping up and like, you know, hugging on me and it was just, it was really, really, uh, that really made me angry.

So then what was happening as the crowd was starting to get bigger in the park.

I don't know how it happened, but it was almost like they, just 100s of people came from nowhere, and then they were, they marched down, they had rocks and sticks and bats, and they were heading downtown, and we pulled up and stopped them at DM Bonanza there at the other path.

So what did you see?

How many people were there?

A couple hundred of them.

And so, there was no retreat in any of us.

And so what happened is, I don't know, this guy came out of the crowd with a baseball bat, and he tried to hit me in the head with a baseball bat, and I stepped inside him with my PR 24.

And I, uh, knocked the bat out of his hand, and I couldn't believe how much that offensive movement, moved that crowd back.

I don't think they were expecting that.

I think in LA, they retreated.

We did.

And so the bat hit the ground, so I didn't want to didn't want it to be used as a weapon against me, so I took the bat, and I threw it.

I, uh, kind of went down like in a catcher stance and grabbed it with my left hand and threw it behind me so it couldn't be used against me.

And then somebody came in from behind me, and then, uh, I was down in like a, uh, squat in position as I was picking up the bat.

And he hit me so hard in the back that it ejected my mace out of my mace holder, and it ejected the, uh, my firearm out of the holster.

Wow.

What did he hit you with?

Did he kick you or hit you with his hand or what did he hit you with?

I think it was like a football tackle, but it was square in the back so I didn't see it coming.

And so, uh, and you also knocked off my glasses, and I remember, um, that, um, Mike Schultz, um, picked up my gun, and my glasses, because those were prescription glasses, and it was just a chaos there.

And, uh, as that happened, uh, Mike McClary, I remember, he got hit in the head with a rock and had split his riot helmet.

Wow.

And I didn't even know that until a couple weeks later.

You knew that neighborhood.

You've been working with that community.

What were you thinking when this was happening?

It was just like, Uh, somebody turned a light switch on, it was total chaos.

So who else was there?

You had a couple of squad cars you're talking about, you and your squad, David Radcliffe, who else was there?

How many police officers were at this particular time in front of this huge crowd?

Maybe only like, I, I, I don't want to do a disservice to anybody who was there that I don't remember, but I don't think there was a lot of us, maybe seven, eight, 10, 12, maybe.

They were coming from the downtown area.

What I do remember is there was a Lexus.

As crazy as this sounds, this vehicle was Alexis was going under the underpass, but then all these hundreds of people came and kind of, uh, the car was stuck in there.

We couldn't get to him, he couldn't get to us.

And I remember that Vilk had to be towed and the next day.

Anyway, we stopped them at that particular area and then it just started the whole riot situation for the next 30 days or whatever it was.

So let me get the picture here.

So he's under the underpass that leads to downtown Las Vegas from this neighborhood to downtown Las Vegas.

He's under the underpass, just happened to get caught there and they destroyed his car.

What about him?

I mean, he stayed safely in the car or how did he not get injured?

I don't remember, but I talked to him the next day.

I mean, that's how quickly it happened.

You know, imagine that you're just, you know, driving your car.

I don't know.

All I know, remember, that's how it happened, and it was just, it was so fast.

Did you recognize any of the people in the crowd, because obviously you worked that neighborhood, so I'm assuming that you probably did, or maybe these all came in from other parts of town.

I didn't recognize anybody there.

I think they were all came from other parts of town.

Most likely they were gang members.

I don't know who they were.

But, um, I, I don't recall one person that I remember or recognized.

So what happened to all the work you were doing in the community prior to these Rodney King riots?

What happened?

What was the aftermath?

Everything was just set back.

And I think it was, you know, punt pass or kick.

What do you do now?

I remember we did a lot of interviewing after that, and I talked to older women, elderly women who had barricaded themselves in their bathtub, because they were frightened.

Um, you know, the mentally challenged kids, uh, just the good people were absolutely frightened.

Um, you know, that night was just, I think the only reason they stopped is because they ran out of bullets.

It sounds awfully weird, but we had a, because I was in a line solution policing, we had a, uh, a video camera, they had just come out and I remember, uh, I think it was Jerry Saldanas, who had the video camera.

And during this time, we were trying to take video of what was happening, and we didn't realize it.

We didn't know where the gunfire was coming, but the next day we watched the video.

There was somebody, I don't know who it was, that was behind a cypress tree.

And he had a Mac 10, and so when the police car would drive by, they would spray at this police car with a Mac 10, which is a fully automatic weapon.

And, but they were hiding behind the cypress street, and we could see it the next day when we, uh, were doing our due diligence, as the world were these bullets coming from, because we had no idea, was behind a cypress street.

How was communication working at that time, if at all?

Or were you just trying to focus on what was in front of you?

Well, we're dealing with what was in front of us, and I have to give the best credit, the greatest leadership to Rory Tuggle, who actually was a sergeant on, uh, as well in that area, and he just did a very, very good job on command and control.

Sending in units, sending in deployed teams to areas that were oversaturated with gang members and attempting arrest and doing all those things.

And so I remember Rory stepped up.

I think he actually became policemen of the year or some sort of a, a ward, but he did a phenomenal job.

All the fellas that I worked with and women too.

Um, that night under that bridge in that area.

They were honorable.

Very tough times in Vegas, for sure.

Thank you, Sergeant Corvettes, for all you've done for the Vegas community.

All you did on Metro for 26 years at what you've done since.

Thanks.

Oh, you're welcome, and thank you for having me.

Now, at the time the fright night occurred.

Metro did not have any armored vehicles coming up.

We're going to talk to the man who did bring an armored vehicle to this fight, the only one they had.

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Joining me now is David Shepard, former United States Marine Corps Officer, Adjunk Professor and Criminal Justice at UNLV, executive director of security at the Venetian Resort, author, lecturer, expert witness in security matters, but what's most important is he was a supervisory special agent in the FBI where he participated in SWAT operations, including during the event that became known as Fright night.

He showed up with the urban assault vehicle that Metro didn't have.

So once you heard about what was going on, then what happened?

Once I found out about it, I talked to the SMC about offering the vehicle to help support the law enforcement that were responding to the trouble up north.

Actually, it was a scout vehicle from Vietnam War.

And they had it, uh, one of them, um, no matter a test site.

We used it from there.

And what we have from that is to go into an area to help protect law enforcement when they're making entrance.

So the FBI, you came in as FBI or you just came in to help with that vehicle.

Uh, came in, helped with a vehicle, but also as FBI. The FBI still has responsibility to help protect the citizens of this community.

So you bring this V 100 in.

And what was the reaction?

What was the effect on the situation?

Uh, I guess shot a lot of different times.

I mean, the bullets were bouncing off the vehicle.

We didn't fire back at it.

Inside the vehicle on the 2nd night, I had the Metro SWAT team in there.

So I was transferred them if they had to break something out, so I drop them off.

How large is this vehicle?

I'm looking at a picture of it, but how large is this?

V 100?

Yeah, let a hold 4 or 5 people on the back.

Okay.

Have the driver.

We didn't shoot back.

We got a shot back with rubber bullets and main backgrounds, but they didn't.

I mean, I still remember one guy shooting at me.

It was by the 7-Eleven.

He was sitting there with a handgun shooting directly at the vehicle.

And he fired all 6 rounds at me and we didn't shoot back at him.

And if we did, we wouldn't have shot him.

And you want to know why we didn't shoot him?

Because he was holding a baby when he was shooting.

So people just came out of their houses and would go shoot out the vehicle and go back in their houses.

Yeah, I'd read other reports about that and talk to other people who said the same thing, that people were using children to shield in the situation.

So one thing about that vehicle's pretty fast.

Oh, it is.

Okay, I picture this thing as being kind of lumbering, so it's fast.

So you said as a scout vehicle in Vietnam, pretty much a scout vehicle, because one's out front, so it can take me to a lot faster than the tanks.

Okay.

So you can go 45, 50 miles an hour in a stop.

Wow, okay.

So what were people thinking and feeling?

What were you noticing about the situation?

My overall opinion, I'm going to talk to people about it later on.

I think a lot of people got scared.

Because they fired a lot more rounds the last night than they did going up into it.

And they had several 100 rounds of being fired.

I scared a lot of people.

You can control it.

So by the time I get done, how do you end up controlling that part?

I mean, we had one person that died, 37 injured, one reporter I saw, but how do you end up stopping?

So we just back up?

What are you gonna do?

Well, it sounds like in retrospect, overwhelming force is the way to stop it.

David Shepard, thank you for being here.

Thank you for what you've done throughout your career, and thank you for what you continue to do for America.

Appreciate you.

Thank you very much.

You take care and be safe.

Thanks.

Well, this was a special episode of Vegas Crime Files.

As you know, I do first-person accounts.

I'm not going to read you a Google script.

I want to hear from the people who are actually involved in these various crimes and incidents, and that's why I wanted to talk to several people.

I was privileged to get to talk to several people who were actually there during the events of what they called fright night.

I will link the lieutenant governor's book there in the description and all the other information.

So I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you maybe became aware of a part of Vegas history that many people would like to forget.

I'm Heidi Harris.

Let me know what you think.

Heidi at Vegas crimefiles.com, Heidi at Vegas crimefiles.com.

Let me know what you think.

Appreciate your comments and your thoughts, and if there's a particular crime that you'd like us to do some investigating on or get the actual people involved on the podcast.

Please let us know.

Heidi at vegascrimefiles.com.

Follow us on all the socials and subscribe anywhere you get podcasts.

Coming up on the next episode of Vegas Crime Files, MS 13.

How bad are they?

You don't even know the half of it.

Join us next time.

Vegas crime files.

With Heidi Harris.