LAS VEGAS — What police first described as the road rage-inspired killing of an innocent mother of four has morphed into a more complex scenario, prompting tough questions and a backlash against her family.
Tammy Meyers, 44, was shot in the head outside her home in a Las Vegas cul-de-sac shortly before midnight Thursday after confrontations that began when she was giving her 15-year-old daughter an after-hours driving lesson and the girl honked at a driver she thought was speeding, police said.
Those facts haven’t changed, said police Lt. Ray Steiber at a news conference Tuesday. He noted that the mother’s life-support was disconnected on Valentine’s Day and insisted that she alone is “our victim.”
The fatal shooting turned out to be a two-way shootout, provoked by an encounter with unidentified assailants, after Tammy Meyers had her daughter rouse her older son, Brandon, who grabbed his gun and joined her in a hunt for the driver she had encountered earlier, Steiber said.
“I would never say that anybody went looking for trouble,” Steiber said when asked to characterize their five- to 10-minute drive through the neighborhood.
“It is our job,” Steiber added, “to ensure that everyone is safe, regardless of what our personal opinions are on certain people’s actions. They weren’t criminal, and I’ll leave it at that.”
The family spoke at a vigil Tuesday night next to the junior high school parking lot where Kristal Meyers got her driving lesson.
“She didn’t deserve this,” said Brandon Meyers, 22. “I did what I had to do to protect my family. Everyone can think what they have to think. I did it for a reason. And I’d do it for anyone I love.”
No one in the family called police until after the shooting, Steiber said, and initially, investigators had just the comments of the son and daughter to go on.
Meyers’ husband, Robert, who was in Southern California at the time, said Friday that Brandon told him he thought there were three people in the car and that he had hit the car at least once with his 9mm handgun.
He called his son a hero and said his wife panicked when she went back out in search of the driver who had frightened her.
“There was mistakes made, like every one of us has made in our lives, but this particular mistake was made to keep a bigger mistake from happening,” Robert Meyers said.
He didn’t respond Wednesday to a message left at his business, Auction Stalkers LLC.
Officer Laura Meltzer, a department spokeswoman, said police were looking Wednesday for the people in the sedan.
A police sketch shows the suspect to be a man in his mid-20s with blond spiky hair and blue or hazel eyes, wearing a white V-neck T-shirt.
“All indications to us are that this unknown person fired first,” Steiber said.
