Police identify Las Vegas shooting suspect








By Greg Botelho, CNN


updated 10:29 PM EST, Sat February 23, 2013







Ammar Asim Faruq Harris, 26, suspected in a shooting on the Las Vegas Strip on Thursday, is still at large, police said.




STORY HIGHLIGHTS


  • The suspect fired from his Range Rover at a Maserati in Las Vegas, police say

  • 26-year-old Ammar Harris is at large, though his car has been impounded, they add

  • The Maserati's driver was shot, then hit a taxi spurring an explosion that left 2 dead

  • The father of the Maserati's driver, an aspiring rapper, says he was "a good boy"




Follow the story here and at CNN affiliates KVVU, KLAS, KTNV and KSNV.


Las Vegas (CNN) -- Police have identified a suspect in a fatal shooting and crash on the Las Vegas Strip that left three people dead.


The suspect is 26-year-old Ammar Asim Faruq Harris, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said Saturday in a press release. He is at large, though a black Range Rover police said he was driving early Thursday morning has been impounded.


Kenneth Cherry, an aspiring rapper known as Kenny Clutch, was driving his Maserati around 4:20 a.m. Thursday when someone in a Range Rover shot at his car as it headed north on Las Vegas Boulevard.






The Maserati continued into the intersection of the boulevard and Flamingo Road and collided with a taxi, which caught fire, killing cab driver Michael Boldon, CNN affiliate KVVU said.


A passenger in that taxi -- identified by the Clark County coroner's office as Sandra Sutton-Wasmund, 48, of Maple Valley, Washington -- also died. Her death and the deaths of Boldon and Cherry have been ruled homicides, according to the coroner's office.


See an iReporter's video of the fire


The fire closed a block and a half of the Strip near some of its biggest draws: Caesars Palace, the Bellagio, Bally's and the Flamingo. Police collected surveillance video from the casinos.


The shooting took place two blocks from where rapper Tupac Shakur was killed in 1996.


The 27-year-old Cherry leaves behind three children, the oldest being 2 years old and the youngest just 2 months, his father said. He died after being shot in the chest and arm.


Kenneth Cherry Sr. blasted news reports and social media messages about his son, claiming some had falsely characterized him as a person "involved in the rap life." He also disputed accounts that his son exchanged gunfire with the Range Rover's driver, saying he wasn't even armed at the time.


"I don't like the way that some of the media stations are portraying my son, because he was black, (like) he's a criminal," the elder Cherry told reporters. "My son was a good boy."


While the police department statement named Harris as the suspect, it did not indicate any charges have been filed so far.


CNN's Elwyn Lopez, Traci Tamura and Miguel Marquez contributed to this report.








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