Review leaves unanswered whose bullets struck 3-year-old Kentre Baker

Nearly nine months after Quinton Baker and his 3-year-old son, Kentre, died in a confrontation with Las Vegas police, a public review has exposed the limit of what investigators can explain. They have an account of why officers fired. They still cannot identify whose bullets struck the child. The October 28, 2026, proceeding examined the February 3 shooting without resolving that central forensic question. ^{1 12}

The Clark County District Attorney’s Office has declined to prosecute the two officers who fired, according to KLAS’s post-hearing reporting. That decision and the uncertainty about Kentre’s wounds stand together: the absence of charges does not establish which gun fired the bullets that hit him. ²

Quinton Baker, 28, and Kentre died at Parkside Villas Apartments near Maryland Parkway and Wigwam Avenue. At the review, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Detective Brian Walter described a father approaching officers while holding his son at gunpoint. Josh Tomsheck, the ombudsman representing the public and the Baker family, questioned both the officers’ response to that danger and whether their actions may have increased the risk to Kentre. ¹

The initial police call came at approximately 1:19 a.m. on February 3, according to the department’s contemporaneous incident announcement. A woman reported that Baker had battered her and her friend at an apartment complex in the 8400 block of South Maryland Parkway. Those were the allegations that brought officers to the scene, not findings by a criminal court. ⁵

Review testimony described an argument involving two women, one of whom warned police that Baker had threatened to kill his son and himself. Walter testified that Baker threatened to kill them both if officers came upstairs. He said Baker later walked toward officers holding Kentre and pointing a handgun at the child, despite commands to stop. Baker reportedly said he wanted to see Kentre’s mother and kill himself. ¹

According to KSNV’s account of the review, body-camera footage captured repeated orders for Baker to stop. One officer asked, “Does he have the gun on the kid’s chest?” Walter also testified that a supervisor instructed an officer to take the shot if he had a clear line of fire. Investigators estimated that about one minute elapsed between the officers’ first visual contact with Baker and the shooting. ¹

Asked whether officers believed Baker posed an immediate threat when they fired, Walter answered: “Based on the officer’s statement at the scene, yes, he was an immediate threat.” The opening qualification matters. Walter was describing an assessment reflected in an officer’s statement, not delivering a judicial ruling on the shooting. ¹

Those figures describe different things. Investigators said the two officers fired five rounds combined and Baker fired four. Autopsy reports documented four gunshot wounds to Baker and two to Kentre. Neither the ammunition totals nor the wound counts establish which weapon caused either of the child’s wounds, or provide a verified sequence for every shot. ¹

When Tomsheck pressed Walter on whether investigators could identify the source of the shots that struck Kentre, the detective said the coroner had not specified which weapon fired each bullet. The disclosed conclusion was narrower than assigning blame: investigators could not determine whether the bullets came from police weapons or Baker’s handgun. It does not support identifying either as the source of Kentre’s wounds. ¹

The review also examined a question that cannot be answered by counting rounds: whether police decisions helped shape the danger they then confronted. Tomsheck asked whether officers’ actions may have increased the risk to Kentre. Walter maintained that they were responding to Baker’s conduct and the threat he presented. ¹

“I think the decedent kind of dictated the series of events that occurred,” Walter testified. He said that if Baker had stayed inside, SWAT officers and negotiators would have arrived and, “in a perfect world, it would have ended peacefully.” Instead, Walter said, Baker left the apartment and approached officers while holding his son and pointing a gun at him. ¹

That is Walter’s assessment of an alternative course, not proof of how it would have ended. His testimony describes an acute threat to a child and explains the officers’ stated reason for firing. It does not, by itself, establish that their choices were the only available ones. Nor can an account of the threat substitute for evidence identifying whose bullets struck Kentre.

The coroner classified both deaths as homicides, as KSNV reported on August 25. That medical classification is separate from a determination of criminal liability. It also did not settle the attribution of Kentre’s wounds; the later review reporting makes clear that investigators still could not identify their source. ^{7 1}

The public proceeding had its own limits. Hearing officer Ozzie Fumo explained that it was meant to present the essential facts surrounding Baker’s death. It was not a criminal trial, returned no verdict and made no formal determination on the cause or manner of death. KSNV reported that prosecutors had already made a preliminary determination against criminal prosecution before the review; KLAS subsequently reported that the office declined to prosecute the two officers who fired. ^{1 2}

The review gave the public a fuller account of the officers’ claimed immediate threat, the supervisor’s conditional instruction to shoot and the short interval before gunfire. It did not turn those explanations into a forensic answer. The prosecution decision leaves the most consequential gap intact: investigators still cannot say whose bullets struck Kentre.