Man faces charges in killings of Vegas mom, child

[April 28, 2012]  LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Police are charging a 22-year-old man in an attack in a blood-splattered Las Vegas home that left a woman and her daughter dead and her husband in critical condition, authorities say.

Bryan Clay was arrested on child abuse charges Friday but will be charged Saturday for the bludgeoning murders of 38-year-old Ignacia Martinez and 10-year-old Karla Martinez, police said late Friday night.

Officers went to their Robin Street home April 16 and found the bodies after the woman's 9-year-old son arrived at school saying that his mom and sister were dead. A 4-year-old boy was also found unharmed in the house.

Arturo Martinez, 39, the husband and father, was critically injured in the attack and remains hospitalized with head injuries.

Fifth-grader Karla Martinez also had been sexually assaulted, police said.

"At 5 p.m. this evening, expedited DNA results came back from the lab linking Clay to the crime scene in both the Robin Street case and another violent sexual assault of a woman prior to the murders," police said in a statement.

Clay is also a suspect in the April 15 sexual assault against a 50-year-old woman. She was walking near a Las Vegas intersection when an assailant forced her into a nearby desert area and violently sexually assaulted her, police said.

"Remember what we're talking about. We're talking about a 50-year-old woman who was attacked, brutally attacked, and she was sexually assaulted," Metro Police Lt. Ray Steiber said, according to a report by KLAS-TV.

"We're talking about a family who was in their home and, unbeknownst to them, a savage intruder enters that home and attacks three people -- killing two and then sexually assaulting them. We have a family out there that has to live with this," he said.

The station reported that a baseball cap left behind by the woman's attacker turned out to be a key piece of evidence.

Authorities found the girl and the mother beaten to death with a blunt instrument in separate bedrooms.

In the days after the attack, the two boys were in protective custody with the Clark County Department of Family Services.

[Associated Press]

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