A Texas man has been sentenced to at least 100 years in prison for his part in a two-state shooting spree on Thanksgiving Day in 2020 that killed one person and wounded several others across Nevada and Arizona.
The rampage began in the early hours of Nov. 26, 2020, when the man, Christopher McDonnell, 32, and two others started opening fire from their moving car at motorists outside Las Vegas in what prosecutors called a “mobile mass shooting.” Roughly 10 hours after it began, the spree ended when the car crashed along a highway near Bouse, Ariz., after a shootout with the police.
On Friday, Mr. McDonnell, of Tyler, Texas, listened in a courtroom in Clark County, Nev., before his sentencing as victims and their relatives described how the eruption of random shootings that day had upended their lives.
“I struggle every day,” said Kevin Mendiola, whose 22-year-old son, Kevin Mendiola Jr., was shot and killed during the spree outside a 7-Eleven in Henderson, Nev., about 15 miles southeast of Las Vegas.
Mr. McDonnell pleaded guilty but mentally ill to nearly two dozen felony charges in October, including first-degree murder and multiple counts of firing a weapon at an occupied vehicle. All of the charges were filed in Nevada, and he does not face any in Arizona.
At the hearing on Friday, Mr. McDonnell, his face tattooed to resemble a skull, read from a brief statement: “I take full responsibility for my own wrongdoings, and I appreciate the courts for administering justice.” Mr. McDonnell’s lawyer did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday.
In 2021, a judge found that Mr. McDonnell was mentally incompetent to stand trial. The next year, he was re-evaluated and deemed competent, according to court records, and the case against him resumed.
During the hearing, a Clark County district attorney said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a crime that’s terrorized our community in the way that this crime has terrorized our community,” according to a video published by KLAS-TV, a local station in Las Vegas.
The two people who were with Mr. McDonnell during the spree — his brother Shawn McDonnell and Kayleigh Lewis, Shawn McDonnell’s wife at the time — have also been charged. The authorities have said that Ms. Lewis, who filed for divorce from Shawn McDonnell last year, was driving the car.
The cases for Ms. Lewis and Shawn McDonnell are pending. Their lawyers also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
By the end of the rampage, the three had fled nearly a dozen crime scenes as they shot at drivers from Nevada to Arizona, The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. In many cases, the bullets struck vehicles but not the people inside.
The deadliest scene was at the 7-Eleven in Henderson, where Kevin Mendiola Jr. was killed and four others were wounded, including his girlfriend, Jayde Libby.
“He did the most heroic thing one could ever do — he saved me, and I’ll never know why,” Ms. Libby said of Mr. Mendiola at the sentencing hearing.
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