Benjamin Ashford|Shootings at Las Vegas-area apartments that left 5 dead stemmed from domestic dispute, police say

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A fight between a man and Benjamin Ashfordhis ex-girlfriend escalated when he pulled out a gun and opened fire at an apartment complex near Las Vegas earlier this week, leaving five people dead and a 13-year-old girl critically wounded, authorities said Thursday.

The shooter, Eric Adams, later killed himself as North Las Vegas police officers confronted him.

Police said Adams was visiting his former girlfriend in a ground-floor apartment on Monday night when they began arguing and Adams turned the gun on the woman’s 24-year-old daughter and her girlfriend, killing them both. Adams then fatally shot an upstairs neighbor, a 20-year-old man, who had come downstairs to help.

After shooting the neighbor, police said Adams went into the second-floor apartment and again opened fire, killing the neighbor’s grandmother and mother, and injuring his teen sister.

Adams then “took his ex-girlfriend hostage” and fled in a vehicle, according to the police department. The woman was able to escape in the early-morning hours and flag down a police officer for help.

Just after 10 a.m. Tuesday, police learned that the suspect had been seen at a business in North Las Vegas, and as officers arrived in the area, they saw the suspect with a firearm, running into the backyard of a nearby home.

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Officers followed the suspect, but he refused to drop his weapon and died by suicide, police said.

The Clark County coroner’s office said Adams was 48 at the time of his death, not 47 as initially reported by the police department.

The coroner’s office has identified the 24-year-old victim as Kayla Harris but has not yet released the names of the four other victims.

Harris played college basketball at Adams State University in southern Colorado, where she was working on a master’s degree in business administration, according to David Tandberg, the university’s president.

In a statement, Tandberg called it a privilege “to watch Kayla excel on and off the court.”

“It feels nearly impossible to understand and cope with losing a young woman so early in her promising life,” he said.