LAS VEGAS—The day Jerry Lopez died at the hands of a heavily armed carjacker, his wife, Karen Lopez, felt a part of herself die with him. It was Dec. 27, 2023.
Now, all she can do is struggle through her tears and pray for the strength to go on.
“I don’t know how to cope with it, how to handle things fully,” Mrs. Lopez said, sitting in the adjustable massage chair her husband loved to kick back in.
Within this cozy family room, custom-made for relaxation and neatly organized, there are memories of the Lopez family in happier times.
The walls are an intimate mosaic of framed photographs with smiling faces interspersed with crosses and religious symbols. Hundreds of movie DVDs and books stand at attention, sandwiched together inside a long wooden entertainment unit.
Her husband enjoyed spending quality time in the family room with his wife and children. Mrs. Lopez now sees it as a repository for cherished memories and fleeting moments worth more than gold.
Mr. Lopez is everywhere in the room, she said, but she is “broken” beyond measure.
“My whole world fell apart that day,” she said, wiping away tears. “There is such a void because Jerry was such a hands-on father, husband, and friend. There is a huge hole to fill.
“How do you go on when your whole world has stopped?”
Her faith sustains her as she learns to live each day without her husband. She knows she doesn’t “have all the answers.”
“I don’t know what life is going to look like tomorrow. I’m taking it day by day, trying to figure all those things out. I never thought I'd have to live without him.”
Through her husband’s death, Mrs. Lopez has learned that evil things happen to good people. And he was a good person. She remembers him each morning leaning over her bedside and kissing her forehead before leaving for work. She would slowly stir from her slumber and smile at him, knowing it was his way of saying, “Don’t worry. I'll be home again soon.”
On the morning of Dec. 27, 2023, Mr. Lopez drove away in the family’s white van to work as a customer advocate at Image First medical linen supply in Las Vegas.
Only this time, Mrs. Lopez doesn’t remember him kissing her goodbye before he left.
She remembers waking to her cellphone ringing at 5 a.m. It was her husband’s best friend and co-worker, Shaun Curls, calling to find out why Mr. Lopez hadn’t shown up for work and wasn’t answering his cellphone.
“Jerry was always early to work. Shaun knew something was wrong,” Mrs. Lopez told The Epoch Times. “Shaun thought maybe he‘d overslept” and called to ask if he was alright. ”I looked over to his side of the bed and said, ’No.'” Jerry wasn’t there.
She checked the home security camera. Sure enough, it showed her husband pulling out of the driveway in the van at 4:15 a.m.
Mrs. Lopez’s worst fears began to take hold when another co-worker received a news alert of an active shooting incident not far from the Lopez residence.
She “pinged” her husband’s location on her cellphone and saw that he had stopped at the corner of South Durango Drive and West Mistral Avenue, near the location of the shooting.
At that point, she said she began to “freak out.”
“All kinds of emotions ran through my head,” Mrs. Lopez said.
A fraught several hours of waiting was followed by the police confirming that her husband had been shot dead in the van by an armed suspect fleeing from the police.
“I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy,” Mrs. Lopez said.
“It’s been more overwhelming than I could even explain. Jerry was going to work. It was four minutes up the road when it happened.”
Those who knew Mr. Lopez say it was a cruel and senseless murder—a case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
The morning Mr. Lopez died, he made the fateful decision to make a U-turn and pull over to the side of the road when he saw police strobe lights flashing in his rear-view mirror.
He had no idea that the shooting suspect, 36-year-old Justin Davidson, was right behind him in a carjacked SUV.
The decision would cost Mr. Lopez his life and leave behind a family of seven children—including six adopted infants with special needs—and a grieving wife besieged by “what-ifs.”
What if Mr. Lopez had gone to work a minute sooner, or later?
What if he had taken a different route?
The total weight of his death has yet to sink in.
“How do you comprehend that my husband was murdered? How do you understand that now I have seven children to raise by myself? That the love of my life is no longer here because of a senseless tragedy?
“I asked God, ‘Why him?’”
The Carjacking
According to the police report, at 3:46 a.m., LVMPD dispatch received several calls about a shooting in the wash area of Placid Street and Maulding Avenue, south of the Strip.Officers later identified the man shooting the rifle in tactical gear as Mr. Davidson, a convicted felon with a lengthy criminal record involving drugs and weapons.
Police said the shooting woke Mr. Davidson’s parents, who went to investigate. Mr. Davidson then began shooting at them, killing his mother. His father escaped in his truck through a hail of gunfire.
Mr. Davidson began firing rounds from a concealed location at police officers when they arrived. The police officers didn’t return fire.
Mr. Davidson then ran to a locked police cruiser with its engine running. He shot out the windows, got inside, and fled the area with officers in pursuit at speeds reaching 104 miles per hour.
Mr. Davidson carjacked another two vehicles at gas stations before spotting Mr. Lopez’s white van making a U-turn at the corner of Durango Drive and Mistral Avenue.
He pulled up alongside the van and fired a round into the vehicle, striking Mr. Lopez and causing the van to stop.
Mr. Davidson jumped out of the stolen SUV and ran over to the van, firing another shot into the passenger side with a rifle.
“He then entered the van from the passenger side and pushed the victim out,” police said.
“Davidson then drove off, running over the victim,” later identified as Mr. Lopez, who was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the police report.
A short distance away, Mr. Davidson was shot dead inside the van by multiple rounds of fire from police officers.
At a press conference on Dec. 29, 2023, LVMPD Assistant Sheriff Yasenia Yatomi said officers fired a total of 53 rounds from their service weapons during two separate volleys of gunfire after the first encounter.
While conducting a grid search of the desert wash area behind the suspect’s home, investigators found several loaded magazines of “various calibers.” They also found a notebook with “various writings in it,” Ms. Yatomi said.
A diagram of a “potential ambush situation” indicated Mr. Davidson was preparing for an “armed confrontation with law enforcement,” she said.
Inside the house, police recovered electronic devices, trail cameras, bulletproof vests, tactical helmets, and other firearms.
The weapons he used in the shootings included a stolen AR-15-type semi-automatic rifle and an AK-47-style rifle with the serial number removed, Ms. Yatomi said.
Police searched Mr. Davidson’s other home in Henderson, where they recovered 60 electronic devices and more notebooks, military manuals, and documents about police responses to mass casualty events.
Ms. Yatomi said officers also found “camping or prepping supplies,” propane, and an ample supply of butane.
Police had recently arrested the perpetrator on a DUI warrant for an incident that occurred in March 2023.
The investigation is ongoing, Ms. Yatomi said, with “many unanswered questions.”
“We do not know if the suspect was attempting to build an improvised explosive device with the materials we found in either home. We do not know why the suspect started shooting in the wash,” she said.
“And we do not know why his parents immediately went into that area upon hearing gunfire. Our investigators are looking into all of it.”
Ms. Yatomi noted that the city has grappled with “several violent crime sprees” and recent “plots” against the community.
“We have multiple families grieving. Needless to say, this was a very dynamic and horrible situation,” she said.
Mrs. Lopez said she has reviewed footage of the fatal encounter caught on police body-worn cameras, and it’s difficult to watch.
She tries to stay focused on the kind, loving person that her husband was.
“I want to remember everything,” she said.
A Legacy
Born in Mexico on Feb. 9, 1984, Jerry Lopez dreamed of becoming a U.S. citizen after his arrival in 1994 at the age of 10. He spent 13 years working his way through the application process, studying hard before earning his citizenship in 2020.
Mrs. Lopez said that becoming a citizen was one of the proudest moments in her husband’s life, next to the day they were married in 2009 and the birth of their son Anthony three years later.
Mr. Lopez had received a job promotion at Image First weeks before his death.
“He came home from work all excited and so proud that he got new business cards with his name on them and his new title,” Mrs. Lopez said. “He couldn’t wait to pass them out to his customers.
“I kept telling him, ‘I’m so proud of you.’ He kept saying, ‘No. We did it.’”
When officers told her that her husband was gone, her heart “just dropped,” she said.
“I was crying ‘no, no, no.’ I pretty much passed out at the side of the road. My stepdad had to catch me when I collapsed,” she said.
“They pretty much just put me in the car and told me to go home and that they'd be in touch with me. It was like an out-of-body experience. I couldn’t grasp the reality of my husband’s murder.”
Her children have yet to fully come to grips with their father’s absence. Yet every so often, they'll ask her, “When is daddy coming home? When will he heal from his boo-boo?”
Mrs. Lopez’s brother, Nathan Sculli, told The Epoch Times that the circumstances surrounding his brother-in-law’s death still seem “surreal.”
Mr. Sculli said he feels driven to tell Jerry’s story because of the person that he was—someone who cared deeply about others. His humanity and strength of character transcended the crime that ended his life.
“I’m trying to do what I can to help out [the family],” Mr. Sculli said. “My sadness is mostly for Karen. But if you could choose someone to marry your sister, you couldn’t have picked a better person” than Jerry Lopez.
“The way that he cared for Karen—loved Karen—was an inspiration. Watching him care for the kids, he was just the best dad.”
Mrs. Lopez’s mom, Peggy Gilbert, said Mr. Lopez wasn’t just her son-in-law; he was like a son to her.
Now living with her daughter, she still feels her son-in-law’s presence “in every part” of the house.
“He was so in love with the kids,” she said. “I used to pray for him every day he left [for work]. The saddest thing is, I didn’t hear him leave that morning. Every day, I still wake up at 4:15 [a.m.] on the dot.”
These days, Ms. Gilbert finds herself “going through the motions” of daily life.
“Thankfully, I like to clean. I walk around all day cleaning. That’s how I keep busy,” she said.
“None of this makes sense. I know there’s evil in the world,” Ms. Gilbert told The Epoch Times. “But I keep thinking, what if Jerry had left a couple of minutes later or he didn’t stop? There are a thousand ‘what-ifs.’
“When I watch the [police] video, I just want to scream at him, ‘Jerry, hurry up and go!’ So he’s not there at that exact time.”
Co-worker Mr. Curls said that since Jerry’s death, everyone at Image First has been feeling devastated and “heartbroken.”
“Best friend doesn’t do it justice. We were like brothers,” he said. “He was the best man at my wedding.”
The two first met through a mutual friend 13 years ago. Eventually, they started “hanging out” together.
One day, Mr. Curls couldn’t get to work because he didn’t have gas money—and then the phone rang.
It was Jerry; Mr. Curls explained his predicament to him.
Jerry said, “Hey, let me call you right back.”
About 30 minutes later, Mr. Curls heard a knock at the door.
“I opened the door, and there’s Jerry. He'd driven all the way across town to give me $20, so I could have gas to go to work,” Mr. Curls told The Epoch Times.
“Jerry was such an amazing person. Anybody who met Jerry or got a glimpse of him can attest to how life-changing it was just to be around him. He had a huge influence on people.”
Mr. Lopez had been with the company for less than nine months when he died, but his legacy of kindness lives on.
“It’s still hard,” Mr. Curls said, “His route was 34. Just seeing Route 34—all we can think of is Jerry. There’s Jerry written all over the company.”
Each morning at about 4:30 a.m., Mr. Curls would call Jerry on his cellphone, “just to make sure” that he was on his way to work.
“Now, it’s the phone call he'll never answer again,” Mr. Curls said.
He still can’t wrap his mind around the fact that his friend is gone forever.
“To think, there’s 2.9 million people who live in Las Vegas, and he was the one killed. What are the odds of him going to work and 20 minutes later, he would never return?” Mr. Curls said.
“The spiritual Christian side of me says to forgive, which I feel—but I‘ll never forget. The day-to-day living and knowing my best friend was murdered. It’s something I’ll wrestle with for the rest of my life.”
Mrs. Lopez said she worries about her children’s care and well-being every day since her husband’s passing. Without her husband, the challenge of raising and homeschooling five boys and two girls is filled with uncertainty.
Mrs. Lopez’s 11-year-old biological son, Anthony—her “miracle baby,” who was born on June 28, 2012, despite fertility issues—continues to struggle with losing his dad.
“Mom, do you realize the day that guy took my dad, he took my childhood?” he told his mom one day. “It’s not fair that my friends have a dad, but I don’t.”
Mrs. Lopez was adamant with her son. “I told him—‘No, you’re going to enjoy your childhood,’” she said.
“He feels now he has to step up and be a father to all of the babies—but he’s only 11.”
On Jan. 12, family members and friends gathered at Mr. Lopez’s funeral before he was cremated. The following day, they launched nine helium balloons in celebration of his life.
It was a heavenly morning, Mrs. Lopez recalled. The sky was aglow in shades of blue and orange, fleeced in clouds shaped like angel wings.
The balloons, when released, formed a “perfect J”—for Jerry—as they drifted skyward.
As hard as it is, and as “unconventional as it sounds,” Mrs. Lopez believes that good eventually comes from tragedy.
Her family has prayed “very hard” about her husband’s killer and has decided to forgive him.
“I know this guy has forever changed the trajectory of my family,” Mrs. Lopez said. “Above all else, if I love the Lord, I can’t hold bitterness and anger in my heart toward him. What does that profit me? It’s not going to bring Jerry back.”
For now, she said, her fondest memories of her husband help her to heal. And there is comfort in knowing that his last breath here on earth “was the first breath he took in Heaven.”
