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Last Thursday, a triple homicide worthy of Michael Bay lit up the Las Vegas Strip when a gunman in a black Range Rover peppered bullets into a rapper driving a Maserati, sending the luxury car careening into a taxi, which exploded right in front of Bally’s Hotel. The rapper died, along with the cabbie and his passenger, as thousands of tourists gaped at the scene.
This morning, Las Vegas police put out an alert for a 22-year-old Miami woman they say was in the SUV during the shooting. Tineesha Lashun Howard — who has a history of prostitution — isn’t a suspect and is “possibly endangered,” police say.
Update: Police are no longer searching for Howard, though Harris remains the primary suspect in the shooting.
Update 2: Police have arrested Harris, who was caught in Los Angeles. Also, in a bizarre twist to the story, a Miami attorney says the Las Vegas police released photos from Harris’ Facebook page that actually showed Miami Bad Girls Club star Tasha Malik, not Tineesha Howard. Since it’s not clear which photos were correct, Riptide has removed all the photos released by Vegas police except for Howard’s mugshot.
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Howard, who also goes by Yenesis Alfonzo, is a Cuban-American from Miami with past arrests in Vegas for prostitution, trespassing, and grand larceny. It’s not clear how long she’s been in Vegas, but Howard has no criminal record in Dade under either of her aliases.
What is clear is that last week she was seen in a black Range Rover with Ammar Harris, a 26-year-old who police say was the gunman in last Thursday’s shooting.
Harris, who has a long, multistate criminal record for robbery, sexual assault, and prostitution, might have gotten into argument in the valet area of Aria, another nearby high-end hotel.
On the other end of that argument was Kenny Cherry, a 27-year-old California rapper who went by Kenny Clutch. Police think Harris followed Cherry after the dustup and then blasted his silver Maserati a few blocks from the infamous scene of Tupac Shakur’s assassination.
Howard’s role in the crime is less certain, but for now the Miami Police Department is helping Vegas cops to try to track her down.
“She’s listed as a missing person,” Officer Bill Cassell, a spokesman for the Vegas police, tells Yahoo. “How she went missing is the subject of the Miami Police Department’s investigation.”
Colleagues of Michael Boldon, the cab driver killed in the wreck, have offered $35,000 for Harris’s arrest. The other victim was Sandra Sutton-Wasmand, a businesswoman from Washington state.
Anyone who knows what happened to Howard can call the Vegas police at 702-828-3521.
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