Dan Bernal could have shot the gunman moments after he killed four and wounded another inside a Las Vegas grocery store.
But he didn’t.
And since June 3, 1999, the former Metropolitan Police Department officer has struggled with that split-second decision.
“I often think: I could have dropped him easy and that would be 27 years that he’s not on the taxpayer’s dime,” Bernal said in a recent interview.
He and other officers received the Unit Medal of Valor from Metro for their heroism that day.
Bernal’s personal and professional life fell apart. He struggled with trauma, substance abuse and homelessness. Now 57 and long separated from Metro, he questions whether shooting Zane Floyd might have saved his career.
“I had some guilt about not pulling my trigger, for years, but I kept reminding myself: All of the shooting took place before we arrived, the police,” Bernal said. “So it wasn’t like, had I shot him someone else wouldn’t have been shot.”
Floyd, a 23-year-old Marine Corps veteran, had executed Thomas Darnell, Carlos Leos, Dennis Troy Sargent and Lucille Tarantino inside the Albertsons on West Sahara Avenue where they worked. Floyd also shot a fifth employee, Zachary Emenegger, who survived.
Before the shooting, Floyd raped a woman working as an escort.
He surrendered to police, went to trial and was sentenced to death.
Now 50, he remains at High Desert State Prison, and his case is again in the public eye because Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson is seeking an execution warrant for him.
Chase, then standoff
Bernal said the call initially came in at 5:16 a.m. as a robbery. He learned from a dispatcher that someone was firing shots.
He arrived at the scene and was loading his AR-15 when Floyd ran out of the store, dressed in boots, black fatigue pants and a camouflage shirt.
Floyd spotted Bernal and ran back inside. Bernal chased Floyd into the Albertsons. Near the entrance, Bernal jumped over Darnell’s body.
“I didn’t know if he was alive or dead at the time because I was in pursuit of Zane,” Bernal said.
Floyd had a head start, and when Bernal realized the gunman was running back out of the store, a standoff ensued in the parking lot.
Floyd slunk to the pavement with his back to a garbage can, his 12-gauge shotgun under his chin.
The killer asked police to shoot him.
“I just wanted the cops to shoot me, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t point, I couldn’t point my gun, my shotgun at the cops,” Floyd told investigators after the attack.
Bernal aimed his rifle at Floyd, but he was about 160 to 200 feet from the gunman and could not hear what Floyd was saying.
Unlike other officers at the scene, Bernal said, he could have made a clear shot.
“I had him center mass for seven minutes,” Bernal said.
His then-Sgt. Brett Zimmerman had told him over the radio to shoot Floyd if he moved the shotgun or tried to go back into the store, Bernal recalls.
Zimmerman said in an interview that Bernal’s recollection of his order was accurate and that the order would have also applied to all officers at the scene. He had Bernal and another officer rotating for rifle duty and pointing their guns at Floyd, he recalled.
Meanwhile, other officers walked through the store and discovered the victims’ bodies.
Floyd never pointed his gun at Bernal or other officers, Bernal said, but arguably posed a threat because he might have been able to shoot faster than the officers could react.
“If he has not raised his weapon, and we’re still negotiating with him, and the rifle’s pointed to his throat, and he’s on his knees, I just don’t think that Danny had any opportunity to shoot him,” said Zimmerman, who eventually became an assistant sheriff and retired from Metro in 2021.
‘I’m going to watch you die’
When officers took Floyd into custody, the gunman asked why Bernal didn’t shoot him.
Bernal recalls asking Floyd, “Why didn’t you point your weapon at me?”
“He said he had too much respect for law enforcement,” said Bernal, who remembers Floyd’s blue eyes looking empty.
The former officer didn’t buy it.
“He didn’t want to engage with other people who had guns and could shoot back, so it was a coward thing, but he tried to play it into a respect thing,” he said.
“I said, ‘But you blew a 60-something-year-old lady’s head off,’” Bernal recalls. “And he’s like, ‘Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have done that. She kind of reminded me of my mom.’ ”
Bernal, believing Floyd would receive the death penalty, said he told Floyd: “I’m going to watch you die.”
Downward spiral — then ‘healing journey’
After his experience responding to the Floyd shooting and other traumatic experiences, Bernal’s personal life and policing career suffered.
His policing partner was shot a year later, he said, and three friends died in helicopter crashes. In his last months at Metro in 2003, he repeatedly responded to suicide and shooting calls.
He started gambling and seeing strippers more frequently. He used alcohol to self-medicate and considered taking his life.
He had struggled with alcohol use before he joined the department but said the Floyd experience made his drinking problem worse.
It was a “downward spiral of epic proportions for Vegas,” he said.
By his own account, he resigned from Metro in lieu of termination after being accused of drunken driving and gambling debt.
Bernal has been homeless. He has received treatment for substance abuse, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, mild traumatic brain injury and grief, he said.
For a time, he worked as director of veteran services for WestCare, a nonprofit that provides addiction treatment and helps homeless veterans.
“I wanted to help Veterans in order to prevent them from potentially exploding and causing another Zane Floyd type situation or imploding and committing suicide,” Bernal, a noncombat Army veteran, wrote in a declaration.
The WestCare job ended when he was arrested in a gambling debt case, Bernal said.
He is still in therapy and most recently underwent in-patient treatment for substance abuse, PTSD and gambling in 2024 while part of a veterans treatment court program that he said led to the dismissal and sealing of a domestic violence case that he still contests.
While at Metro, Bernal had attended UNLV’s Boyd School of Law. He was in his last semester at the time of his DUI in 2003 and did not earn his degree, he said, but petitioned for reinstatement in 2011 to finish a writing requirement and officially graduated.
He said he first sat for the bar exam last year, but did not pass. He took the exam a second time in February and again was unsuccessful. He plans to make another attempt in July.
Currently, he works for Las Vegas defense attorney Craig Mueller as a law clerk.
He still relives June 3, 1999, on the anniversary of the shooting and every time there’s an active shooter.
He hopes that telling his story publicly will help him in what he calls his “healing journey” and aid other police officers and veterans who are struggling.
Lingering questions
As his career declined, he wondered if Metro would have forgiven his transgressions had he shot Floyd or whether those missteps would have even happened.
Zimmerman, Bernal’s former supervisor, said Metro emphasizes de-escalation. He does not think killing Floyd would have saved Bernal’s career.
Bernal wishes Floyd had pointed his weapon at the officers who responded, giving them a justifiable reason to shoot him.
“I don’t want to take another person’s life unless it’s necessary, and I remind myself that it wasn’t necessary and I knew in my heart that if I would have squeezed the trigger and shot Zane, it would have been worse off for me because I knew in my heart it would not have been a good shoot,” he said. “I could have gotten away with it. I don’t think anybody in Clark County … would have complained or bitched about me shooting Zane Floyd, given the carnage.”
Over the years, Bernal said, as he has worked to heal and recover, he has become more comfortable accepting that decisions of death and life are in God’s hands, unless the situation calls for self-defense or the defense of others.
Asked if he thinks Floyd should be executed now, he pauses.
“I really don’t know,” he said, adding that he could support an argument either way.
“I think he should have died that day, in that parking lot, but that didn’t happen, and I’m more comfortable with accepting that, ‘hey, that’s God’s realm, not mine,’” he said.
Bernal, who became a police officer because he wanted to protect people from violent crime, said he does not regret not taking Floyd’s life, but still wonders how his own life might have been different had he done so.
He also does not regret being one of the officers who responded to the Albertsons. He thinks his graveyard squad handled the situation well.
“I was proud to have been involved in that,” he said.
If you’re thinking about suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, help is available 24/7 by calling or texting the Lifeline network at 988. Live chat is available at 988lifeline.org. Additionally, the Crisis Text Line is a free, national service available 24/7. Text HOME to 741741.
Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com.
