Around 7PM On the evening of Wednesday June 29th, 35 year old Phoukeo Dej-Oudom was fatally shot by her husband in the parking lot of Walgreens located at the corner of Lake Mead and Jones Blvd in the Northwest part of town.
A witness spotted the woman waving and screaming for help in the street near her home and picked her up. The husband chased them into a CVS parking lot two blocks away, where he dragged his wife into his car at gunpoint. As he drove off, his wife partially hung out the window, she escaped and started running. Witnesses saw the man chasing her in his car while she fled towards Walgreen’s on Lake Mead. There Witnesses heard four gunshots. Bystanders tried to help the woman but she had already died. Homicide Lt. Dan McGrath said the last gunshot was to her head.
After Dej-Oudom gunned down his wife he returned to their family’s apartment and killed their three children, 15-year-old daughter, Dalavanh Ariel Dej-Oudom, 14-year-old son, Xonajuk J.J. Dej-Oudom, and youngest son, 9-year-old Anhurak Jason Dej-Oudom, then shot himself. Officers were sent to family’s apartment complex around 8 p.m. on Wednesday night, after a relative from Ohio reported they had received suicidal messages from Jason Dej-Oudom. SWAT officers found the four dead from gunshot wounds inside the same bedroom sometime after 10 p.m.
LVPMD detectives explained there was a history of domestic violence at the couples address, Officers responded to a domestic violence incident last month. Phoukeo Dej-Oudom had filed for divorce from her husband, Jason Hagan Dej-Odoum, on May 25th this year. Court records indicated there was June 22 hearing on the custody motion, but neither party appeared and the case was dismissed. She wrote in the custody motion that her husband was “leaving state lines, returning to Ohio with all 3 children, without my consent/or knowing. Children are missing valuable school days, testing etc.”
The Laotian family moved to Las Vegas from Columbus, Ohio where they were married in 2000. In Phoukeo Dej-Oudom’s complaint for divorce, she indicated the children had been living with both parents in Las Vegas since March 2015 and previously had lived with both parents in Columbus, Ohio. The family was originally from Laos. Jason Dej-Oudom also faced domestic violence charges in Ohio in 2006.
The Dej-Oudom’s family from Ohio have been in contact with police and authorities and will arrange to come to Las Vegas to handle matters.
Dej-Oudom Family in happier times
Jason Dej-Oudom Mug Shot from previous domestic violence arrest
