PRIME SUSPECT–This photo provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department shows Ammar Harris in a booking photo from a 2012 arrest in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department)
by Ken Ritter
Associated Press Writer
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A 26-year-old man was being sought Sunday as the prime suspect in a pre-dawn shooting on the Las Vegas Strip last week which led to a fiery crash that left three people dead and several others injured.
Las Vegas police Capt. Chris Jones said Sunday that investigators are working around the clock to sort through evidence and find Ammar Harris following the discovery Saturday of a black SUV used as a getaway car in the shooting and six-vehicle chain-reaction carnage on the neon-lit boulevard near the Bellagio, Caesars Palace, Bally’s and Flamingo resorts.
Jones cited “lots of information coming at us all at once, especially on the Range Rover.” He wasn’t specific.
An aspiring rapper driving a Maserati was shot to death Thursday, and two people in a taxi died in a crash and fireball when the Maserati hit their vehicle.
Harris, who police said was arrested last year on allegations that he was a pimp, was named Saturday as the prime suspect in the triple homicide. Jones said police didn’t know where he was.
Police released a jail photo of Harris taken following his arrest in Las Vegas last year on pandering, kidnapping, sexual assault and coercion charges. The disposition of that case was not immediately known.
Harris sometimes goes by the name Ammar Asim Faruq Harris, police said. The photo shows him with tattoos on his right cheek and words on his neck above an image that appeared to depict an owl with blackened eyes. Jones warned that Harris should be considered armed and dangerous.
Police had been searching for the black Range Rover, with blackout windows and distinctive black rims, since it was last seen speeding away from the shooting. It was located at a gated apartment complex a couple of blocks east of the Strip, and was impounded as evidence.
Kenneth Wayne Cherry Jr., was mortally wounded when the dark gray Maserati he was driving was peppered by gunfire from the SUV. Taxi driver Michael Boldon and passenger Sandra Sutton-Wasmund, of Maple Valley, Wash., died in the taxi.
Boldon, 62, was a family man who moved from Michigan to Las Vegas. Sutton-Wasmund, 48, was a businesswoman and mother of three.
A passenger in the Maserati was wounded in the arm and four people from four other vehicles were treated for non-life-threatening injuries. The Maserati passenger has not been identified, and police said he was cooperating with investigators.
The blink-of-an-eye chain of events had family members and friends in Las Vegas, California, Michigan and Washington mourning the dead this weekend.
“My son was a good boy,” Kenneth Cherry Sr. told reporters in a Saturday news conference convened by Las Vegas lawyers Vicki Greco and Robert Beckett.
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