A free community celebration at Desert Breeze Ballfields Saturday will pause its kickball games and car show for something heavier: a moment of silence honoring an LVMPD officer ambushed and killed while on duty just over a month ago. The Great American Kickoff runs from 4 to 7 p.m. on September 12, with festivities beginning at 4:30 p.m., and organizers are billing it as a chance to bring residents, veterans and first responders together at a moment of collective grief and national remembrance.
The event, hosted by Clark County Commissioner Justin Jones, takes place at Desert Breeze Ballfields, located south of the Desert Breeze Community Center at 8275 W. Spring Mountain Road in the unincorporated town of Spring Valley, according to Clark County. As FOX5 Vegas reports, the gathering includes a kickball tournament, a car show with more than 60 vehicles, and a grill-off pitting teams from Clark County, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, the Clark County Fire Department and the Veterans Association of Real Estate Professionals against one another.
A Tribute Woven Into the Celebration
At 4 p.m., a tribute ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of September 11 will include a moment of silence for LVMPD Officer Austin Abdelnabi, per the same FOX5 Vegas report. The ceremony will feature honor guards from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department alongside Marine Corps and Army Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps units, according to Clark County — JROTC units from local Southern Nevada high schools frequently take part in such civic ceremonies.
Abdelnabi, a 30-year-old U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served four years with two overseas deployments before joining LVMPD in November 2023, was assigned to the department's Southeast Area Command, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. He was killed in the line of duty on August 4 near Interstate 11 and Mountain Vista Street after being ambushed while responding to a report of an armed, erratic individual at a business on East Tropicana Avenue, LVMPD says. Both the suspect and Abdelnabi died following an exchange of gunfire, according to the department. Hoodline previously reported on the immediate aftermath of the shooting in a report just days after the ambush and again as investigators tallied the year's officer-involved shootings.
Free Food, Games and a Push for Community Connection
Beyond the kickball diamonds and grill smoke, the Great American Kickoff will feature more than 25 neighborhood vendors, free food while supplies last, games, face painting and a live DJ, per Clark County. The county describes the event as designed to foster community connection between residents, veterans and first responders — a mission that echoes FOX5 Vegas's framing of the day as bringing the community together to celebrate unity, support veterans and first responders, and honor those who sacrificed for public safety.
The Veterans Association of Real Estate Professionals, one of the grill-off's co-hosts, is a HUD-approved national nonprofit that advocates for veteran homeownership, financial literacy and housing assistance, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Local VAREP volunteers work with Nevada housing agencies to provide mortgage-free homes to wounded veterans.
A Park Built for Big Gatherings
Desert Breeze Park spans more than 240 acres in western Clark County and completed a major expansion in May that added four regulation baseball fields and an ADA-accessible playground, according to Clark County. The park also houses an aquatic facility, community center, skate park and dog parks. That expanded complex includes the Mike Aker Adaptive Field, which opened in May as Nevada's first publicly built and operated baseball field designed for individuals with physical and cognitive disabilities, developed in partnership with the Miracle League of Las Vegas — a milestone Hoodline covered in West Las Vegas Swings for the Fences.
The park has long served as a hub for major Southern Nevada gatherings, previously hosting the Extreme Thing youth festival — which drew up to 25,000 attendees — and the annual Great American Foodie Fest, as Hoodline detailed in its recent look at the Extreme Thing's decade-long return. Commissioner Jones has represented District F, which covers more than 375,000 residents across Spring Valley, Enterprise, Paradise and rural western Clark County, since 2019, though he is set to vacate his seat at the end of his term, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Jones previously served in the Nevada State Senate from 2012 to 2014.
