Earlier this month, a 16-year-old boy living in North Las Vegas was placed in handcuffs in his parent's home and taken to jail with murder charges that could have kept him behind bars for the rest of his life.
But Patrick Wayne Harper was nowhere near the drug deal gone bad that police suspected he was involved in, and last week authorities in Nevada admitted to their error, the Las Vegas Review Journal reports.
Harper says that he was two miles away from the drug deal, buying a slushy before heading to a high school football game. The police had accused the teen of killing a 20-year-old on Sept. 5. Harper was arrested on Sept. 11. He was held in the Clark County Juvenile Justice Services Detention Center until Sept. 16, after which he was sent to a juvenile cell at the Clark County Detention Center, according to Kristina Wildeveld, Harper's lawyer.
"It's a once in a lifetime" occurrence, said Wildeveld, adding that she hadn't seen a similar case in 20 years of practicing law.
On Sept. 23, Harper was released around 5:45 p.m after the District Attorney's Office dropped the charge against him.
Why did they let him off?
Statements from a number of students and coaches supported Harper's alibi, according to his lawyer. In addition, a surveillance video that Harper's lawyer obtained shows the teen buying a drink near his high school on the night of the shooting. The store is a couple of miles from the place where an alleged drug dealer was shot in the head.
North Las Vegas police said earlier this week that they were attempting to "authenticate" the surveillance video and will continue to search for more evidence in the case.
So why was Harper ever even arrested?
A witness of the shooting provided police with Facebook photos that they believed were of the shooter, according to police. Authorities then contacted Clark County School District police at Mojave to help identify "Patrick too Livee" — the name of the alleged shooter — and a school officer provided North Las Vegas police with Harper's name and picture.
When North Las Vegas police later showed the photo of Harper to a witness, the arrest report said, the witness couldn't say who it was. Police also showed a witness a photo of someone else, who was not identified in the police report.
Police department spokeswoman Chrissie Coon said that if they can find more information, it's possible for Harper to be named as a suspect again. Officials are also looking at other potential perpetrators.
"This may be a situation where the ball's now back in our court and our detectives have to work twice as hard as they did the first time to try and establish who did it and the evidence we need to be able to prove it in a court of law," Coon said.
Wildeveld said Harper, who was a high school junior, had been expelled from school, but was invited back on Tuesday.