Moments after a downtown Las Vegas bartender was fatally shot as she sat in her parked car, her passenger laid down on the passenger seat and called 911, according to audio of the call obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The caller had been driven a few blocks home from the downtown Las Vegas bar Atomic Liquors by Hope Ritter, 29, a bartender there. He told a dispatcher that he and Ritter had parked in front of his house to talk. Then, he said, he heard gunshots.
At that point, Ritter stopped speaking mid-sentence and “slumped over in her seat,” according to a police report.
“We were talking about two guys who walked by,” the caller said on the recording, describing the men as “masked” and wearing dark clothing. “They came by and shot her in the head. There are two bullet holes in the window, and she is bleeding out. She’s dead.”
According to the Metropolitan Police Department, Ritter and another person were sitting in a vehicle on the 400 block of 11th Street, near Lewis Avenue, around 2 a.m. on Feb. 15 when two men walked past the vehicle.
When the dispatcher asked the caller who shot at Ritter, he replied, “I don’t know,” adding that he immediately laid down in the passenger seat and “did not turn his head” to look where the men fled.
In the 911 recording, the caller, who didn’t give his name, also said that Ritter was a single mom and he had a crush on her.
“It scared me. … Oh my god,” the caller sobbed on the recording. “Hope is no longer here. And it’s my fault because I wanted to bring her to my house. She gave me a ride home.”
On Sunday, Ritter was remembered by her coworkers and friends in a fundraiser for her 10-year-old daughter at Atomic Liquors, on Fremont Street at South 10th Street.
“She loved everyone unconditionally,” friend Glen Johnson said at the fundraiser, adding that Ritter “radiated hope.”
Police announced Monday that Phillip Strong, 18, and Charles Wright, 20, were identified as suspects in the homicide and had been arrested. Wright, who was already in police custody on unrelated charges, was rebooked on Friday on suspicion of open murder with a deadly weapon, police said.
Strong and Wright were being held with no bail after they both appeared in court Tuesday.
Contact Akiya Dillon at adillon@reviewjournal.com.
