Leroy Smurf Lucero was killed on his 48th birthday, July 22, 2019, outside his trailer home near Mills Avenue and Hot Springs Boulevard in Las Vegas. After spending the day with family, he returned home that evening and was shot after someone honked a car horn at about 11:30 p.m. Witnesses described three shadowy figures in black standing by a dark-colored vehicle; they fled after the shots. First responders found a faint pulse and applied life-saving measures, but Lucero later died. An autopsy attributed his death to three gunshot wounds to the upper chest, lower back, and right forearm and ruled it a homicide.

Investigators uncovered Lucero’s past as a former leader of the Syndicato de Nuevo Mexico prison gang and that he had testified as a government witness against SNM members; an unsealed FBI affidavit described his testimony as a significant factor in convictions and concluded SNM leaders orchestrated the killing. No one has been charged in Lucero’s murder; the investigation is with the FBI. Two men named in reports, Robert Padilla and a man with the last name Ruiz, are in federal custody on unrelated charges.

Did anyone in the community have contact with Lucero in the weeks before his death or notice suspicious vehicles around that trailer park?