Mother claims son killed by best friend after he was found dead in Las Vegas apartment

By Caitlin Lilly, Mike Allen

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    LAS VEGAS, Nevada (KVVU) — The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department says a suspect has been arrested in connection to a man who was found dead during a welfare check.

According to Las Vegas police, at about 2 p.m. Sunday, officers conducted a welfare check at an apartment in the 1300 block of H Street.

Inside the apartment, police said officers located an unresponsive man who was suffering from an apparent gunshot wound.

Medical personnel responded and pronounced the man deceased at the scene, police said.

Las Vegas police said on Wednesday that detectives identified 20-year-old Paul Abercrombie as a suspect in the incident.

According to LVMPD, Abercrombie was taken into custody on Tuesday and booked in absentia into the Clark County Detention Center for open murder with a deadly weapon.

The Clark County Coroner’s office confirmed the victim’s identity as Christopher McCary, 20. Officials said his cause of death was determined to be multiple gunshot and stab wounds. His matter of death was a homicide, the coroner’s office said.

McCary’s family says Abercrombie was his best friend.

“Paul’s been at my house dozens of times,” Christopher’s mother, Qiantas McCary, said in an interview with FOX5 Wednesday. “He ate with us. Joked with us.”

McCary says she was blindsided by her son’s death and is also shocked at the person police think killed him.

“Chris and Paul called each other twins because they looked so much alike,” she said.

McCary talked about the late-night call her son got from Paul to hang out on the night of his death.

“I said, ‘Chris, don’t go. It’s so late, just go back to sleep,’” she recounted. “He’s like, ‘No, I’m just going to hang out for a little bit.’ And I knew in my stomach something wasn’t right. I knew it.”

Christopher’s girlfriend, Ajanae Lehmann, joined McCary Wednesday to talk about how they’d remember Christopher.

“We talked about getting married,” Lehmann said. “We talked about having kids together. He wanted to be a dad so badly. He always talked about having kids and being a better father than he was.”

The McCary family says the man they lost was instrumental in helping his mother through her health issues.

“Chris picks me up and takes me up to the car,” McCary said. “He makes sure I take my medicine. He makes sure I get to my appointments. He picks up my medication.”

McCary suffers from Lupus and says Christopher did what she could not when it flared up.

“When I was too ill to make my kids dinner, he did,” she remembers. “When I was too ill to take my son to basketball practice, he did.”

McCary says it’s not quite clear where the family goes from here.

“I’m just waiting for him to walk through my door any second and give me a hug and a kiss and ask me how my day is going,” she said.

Abercrombie is due in court Monday morning.

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