A man jumped to his death at Hoover Dam early Tuesday, hours after calling police to say he had killed his girlfriend at their hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, authorities said.
The 911 caller told police they could find a woman’s body at a room at the Treasure Island hotel-casino, police Capt. Tom Lozich said. The man matter-of-factly provided the woman’s Social Security number and her driver’s license information, he said.
Hotel security officials found the woman, identified as Rebecca Roux, 27, of Sanford, Maine. She had been beaten to death, the Clark County coroner’s office said.
A short time after the 911 call, Hoover Dam police noticed a man sitting atop the dam wall, said Colleen Dwyer, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that oversees the dam about 30 miles east of Las Vegas.
The man, identified as Lawrence Joyce, 34, of New Hampshire, told officers he had killed his girlfriend in Las Vegas, Dwyer said.
Hoover Dam was shut down and Las Vegas police tried to negotiate with Joyce, Dwyer said. He briefly descended the wall at one point, when officers tried unsuccessfully to subdue him with a stun gun, Lozich said.
Joyce returned to the wall, however, and leaped some 700 feet to his death.
Lozich said Joyce and Roux had been staying at the Strip hotel for a couple of days.
There have been about 30 suicides at the dam since it was completed in 1935.