Carjacking Suspect Steals Two Vehicles, Leads Metro on Chase Into Henderson

A man accused of stealing a car in southwest Las Vegas and then forcing his way into a second vehicle in Henderson was taken into custody Tuesday after a chase that stretched across the valley and ended in a neighborhood near Green Valley Parkway and Robindale Road.

Metro officials say officers were investigating a stolen vehicle on the 7000 block of South Rainbow Boulevard when they located the car around 11:19 a.m. The suspect exited the vehicle and sped off from the scene before officers could make contact, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Rather than immediately pursue on the ground, officers relied on an air unit to follow the suspect from above.

That decision lines up with standard Metro procedure, which calls for officers to request helicopter tracking and give the Air Support Unit time to get overhead before ground units move in on a stolen vehicle, according to a department pursuit policy document. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's Air Support Unit flies five helicopters up to 20 hours a day across Clark County, and it assisted in 127 pursuits and 438 stolen vehicle recoveries last year, per the agency's own figures.

A Second, Forceful Carjacking Changes the Equation

The suspect eventually stole another vehicle by force, allegedly grabbing it at a business on the 2300 block of Paseo Verde Parkway in Henderson, police said. That location sits near the District at Green Valley Ranch, roughly 15 miles southeast of where the pursuit began on South Rainbow Boulevard, according to BaseLocal's local reporting. A photo caption accompanying the Review-Journal's report also describes the suspect as having allegedly stolen a delivery van during the chase.

Once the carjacking turned violent, Metro officers initiated a pursuit, leading the suspect on a high-speed chase from the southwest Las Vegas valley into Henderson. The pursuit ended in a neighborhood near Green Valley Parkway and Robindale Road, where the suspect was taken into custody, the Review-Journal reported.

Why Officers Held Back, Then Didn't

The shift from air surveillance to an active ground pursuit reflects a policy change Sheriff Kevin McMahill made in July, when he modified Metro's pursuit rules to let officers chase suspects in stolen-vehicle cases, DUI cases, and major investigations — reversing earlier limits that mostly reserved pursuits for violent felonies, according to KNPR. Even with that change, standard protocol still prioritizes aerial tracking over ground chases to reduce risk to the public, which is why officers initially stood back on South Rainbow Boulevard.

Forcibly taking a vehicle from a person, as police allege happened on Paseo Verde Parkway, meets the definition of robbery under Nevada Revised Statute 200.380, a category B felony carrying a mandatory 2 to 15 years in state prison. Simply possessing or transferring a stolen vehicle is a separate charge under NRS 205.273, a category C felony punishable by 1 to 5 years and fines up to $10,000. It remains unknown whether weapons were used during the Paseo Verde Parkway carjacking, and it's unclear whether any crashes or injuries occurred during the chase through Henderson.

Nevada's Car Theft Problem, By the Numbers

The case adds to a string of similar pursuits Metro has handled this year. Hoodline previously reported on a 7-mile North Las Vegas chase in August, a taxi carjacking that sparked a 100-mph pursuit through the southwest valley in May, and a pre-dawn carjacking chase in February that also ended in an arrest.

Vehicle theft remains a persistent problem statewide even as local numbers improve. Nevada recorded 318 vehicle thefts per 100,000 residents in 2025, tying New Mexico for the second-highest rate among all states behind California, according to data published by Visual Capitalist. Still, motor vehicle thefts across the Las Vegas metro area fell 35% from 2023 to 2024, double the national decline rate, per FBI data cited by 8 News Now. That same data showed local clearance rates for auto theft remain low — 8.7% for Metro, 4.3% for Henderson police, and 2.4% for North Las Vegas police — making arrests like Tuesday's notable. Metro says it still recovers about 75% of stolen vehicles valley-wide, typically within a week of the theft being reported.