Clark County's top death investigator says Las Vegas is finally catching a break from some of its deadliest trends. On Friday, May 1, 2026, Coroner Melanie Rouse released 2025 figures showing declines in homicides, drug fatalities and heat-related deaths, and rolled out a new public dashboard with case-level data. After several years of rising overdose and heat-linked deaths across Southern Nevada, the shift is a notable change of direction that officials hope to build on.
Rouse said the office wants the added transparency to help communities and policymakers react faster as patterns emerge and shift.
Numbers in Brief
According to data from the Clark County Coroner's Office, the office recorded 178 homicides in 2025, down from 197 in 2024. Drug fatalities fell to 1,228 in 2025 from 1,389 the year before, and heat-related deaths declined to 257 in 2025 compared with 443 in 2024. Altogether, the coroner's office investigated nearly 6,000 deaths last year, the dashboard shows.
Who It Hit
The dashboard also shows deaths among people experiencing homelessness dropped about 16 percent to 328 in 2025. More than half of those deaths were drug-related, and roughly 10 percent were linked to heat.
Rouse told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "I really wanted to get to where we were sharing information and being transparent as to what we’re seeing in our communities," adding that "our ruling of homicide does not necessarily equal criminal activity." In other words, a death can be classified as a homicide without a corresponding police case or criminal charge.
Why Counts Differ From Police Totals
The coroner's totals do not always match police statistics. The Coroner/Medical Examiner is responsible for medicolegal determinations in deaths that occur outside medical settings and in other cases where the office accepts jurisdiction. Clark County's Coroner/Medical Examiner description explains that numbers can change over time as investigations finish and lab testing is completed, which can shift how individual deaths are classified.
Officials Point To Fentanyl Trend And Harm Reduction
Rouse told the Las Vegas Review-Journal she credits a tapering of the fentanyl wave, along with wider availability of fentanyl test strips and naloxone, for the drop in drug deaths. Even with the decline, she noted that drug fatalities still made up nearly one quarter of the coroner's caseload in 2025.
She also said that data for a given year often are not finalized until spring, which is why the new dashboard matters for tracking trends month to month rather than waiting for an annual summary. County officials say the dashboard will be updated as cases are certified, and they hope residents, public health partners and policymakers use it to monitor whether these downward trends hold as toxicology and other investigations wrap up.
