Convicted Sex Offender Shoots 80-Year-Old Woman In The Face After Prolonged Assault, Police Say

An 80-year-old woman narrowly escaped death last week after a convicted sex offender broke into her home, beat her and shot her in the face with her own gun, police say.

The victim, identified only as Shevaun, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that she first spotted the man at her front door at around 8 p.m. on Sunday, July 1.

“What are you doing?” Shevaun she asked him, according to the Review-Journal. 

“I’m gonna rape you,” he responded in her account of the incident. 

Police say they arrested Herbert Rogers, 53, for the crime the next day. He was booked in Clark County Detention Center on charges including sexual assault, attempted murder, burglary, kidnapping and battery, according to KVVU in Las Vegas.

Police identified Rogers as a convicted sex offender, according to KLAS. He allegedly attempted to sexually assault the woman and ransacked the home for over an hour, going into each room and packing boxes full of the 80-year-old’s belongings, the Review-Journal reported.

The victim told KVVU that Rogers stood over her with a screwdriver threatening to kill her, and at one point tackled her to the ground when she tried to get to her front door.

As she lay on the ground, Shevaun remembered that she kept her father’s antique gun hidden underneath the couch. But as she pulled the gun out, Rogers ran over and took it from her, she said.

“He told me, ‘I’m gonna have to kill you,’” Shevaun told the Review-Journal. “I said, ‘Come on, you don’t have to do that.’”

“He started going for the door and I thought he was leaving, then he turned right around with that gun and went straight for my forehead. I have six stitches here and here,” the victim told KVVU. “I was sitting and he shot me; it went in here and out here.”

The bullet grazed Shevaun’s eyelid and eyebrow but miraculously didn't do any more serious damage, she told KVVU. Police responded to a report of a home invasion soon after Rogers left the woman’s home on July 1. Shevaun was taken to University Medical Center of Southern Nevada where she treated for injuries to her face and held for several days.

In a statement on Facebook, Derek Stonebarger, a man who claims to be Shevaun’s caretaker and neighbor, recounted the details of the crime and quoted the victim.

"I was trying to be nice and keep my wits about me the whole time,” Shevaun said in the statement. “I asked him - is that a tattoo of your girlfriend on your arm? He wasn’t amused. He's probably not amused that I’m still alive either.”

Stonebarger described Rogers as a homeless man that lived in park close to Shevaun’s home. Community members told KVVU that Rogers went to the park nearly every day before his arrest.

[Photo: Las Vegas Metro Police]