Joel Damian-Marin

Joel Damian-Marin, a 48-year-old Black man known to some as a "Lewis park basketball legend," lived in a home in eastern Las Vegas, Nevada. In the early hours of November 2, 2021, the sound of barking dogs woke him. At around 1 a.m., he took a flashlight and his own 9 mm handgun and went into his backyard on Denali Preserve Street to investigate the noise. While he was outside, he was shot. Emergency responders took him to a local trauma center, where he was pronounced dead.

The investigation by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department uncovered video from nearby homes that showed Joel walking outside with his flashlight just moments before he was killed. A second video, recorded minutes later, captured the sounds of two men fleeing his yard. One man could be heard saying, “Oh God, Oh God,” while the other said, “Let’s get out of here.”

Just over a day after the shooting, police arrested a man named Clayton Perkins, then 25, outside a Las Vegas casino on unrelated charges. During the arrest, Joel Damian-Marin's 9 mm handgun fell out of Perkins’ pocket. Perkins, a convicted felon, was sentenced in federal court to 18 months in prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm. While he was in custody for another matter in March 2023, detectives formally identified him as a suspect in the homicide.

Clayton Perkins was booked into the Clark County Detention Center and charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder in connection with Joel's death. He denied ever being near the home. The investigation continued, and police identified a second suspect, 23-year-old Gilbert Vaneyck. In September 2023, Vaneyck, who was already in custody at the Clark County Detention Center on unrelated charges, was rebooked on new charges of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit robbery.

As of September 2023, the charges against both Clayton Perkins and Gilbert Vaneyck were pending in court.