Police said Juan Orona reported the shootings himself before officers found three victims dead inside an O’Bannon Drive apartment.
LAS VEGAS, NV — A 29-year-old man was jailed after police said he admitted shooting his girlfriend and her two children, who were found dead Tuesday evening inside a west Las Vegas apartment.
Juan Orona faces three counts of open murder with a deadly weapon and 10 counts of discharging a firearm into an occupied structure, according to local reports citing police and jail information. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police said Orona went to the department’s Southeast Area Command substation at about 7 p.m. Sept. 1 and reported that he had shot the three victims at an apartment in the 5100 block of O’Bannon Drive.
Officers went to the apartment, near West Sahara Avenue and South Decatur Boulevard, and found an adult woman, a teenage girl and a boy younger than 10 suffering from apparent gunshot wounds. Medical personnel pronounced all three dead at the scene, police said. Their names had not been publicly released in the initial reports reviewed for this story.
Police described the adult victim as Orona’s girlfriend and said the two younger victims were her children. Investigators initially had not confirmed whether Orona was the children’s father. Police later identified him as the suspect and announced the charges against him. Authorities have not publicly disclosed a suspected motive for the killings.
Lt. Robert Price told reporters that no one inside the apartment had called police before Orona arrived at the substation. Officers went to the residence after receiving the information from him, according to police accounts. Investigators were examining the circumstances surrounding the family and whether there had been any previous domestic violence involving the household.
Orona had a superficial gunshot wound to his stomach when he contacted police, Price said. He was taken to a hospital for treatment and later released before being interviewed by homicide detectives. Police had not determined in their preliminary briefing how he was wounded or whether the injury was self-inflicted.
Police characterized the killings as an isolated incident and said investigators did not believe there was an ongoing threat to the public. Price described the deaths as a tragic situation while homicide detectives continued gathering information about what happened before the shootings.
The Clark County Coroner’s Office is responsible for formally identifying the victims and determining their causes and manners of death. Police said the investigation remains active, and authorities have asked anyone with information about the family or the shootings to contact the Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Section or Crime Stoppers of Nevada.
Orona remained in custody as the case moved into the court system. Local reporting said he was scheduled for an initial court appearance Thursday. The allegations against him have not been proven in court, and investigators had not released additional information about a possible motive as of the latest reports reviewed.
Author note: Last updated September 3, 2026.