Arts District Shops Answer a Deadly First Friday With a Mentorship Coalition

October 17, 2026

LAS VEGAS

The Arts District's answer to the worst night in its history is not a bigger fence. It is a shop door, opened on purpose. Business owners in the downtown neighborhood where a shooting during the October 2 First Friday killed 15-year-old Carth Onasi Jacobs-Rodgers and wounded two others have formed the Arts District Action Coalition, a program that pairs at-risk youth with local businesses for mentorship, community service, internships and jobs, Focal News and FOX5 reported. Ten businesses have signed on so far, organizers told FOX5, and the coalition is still accepting more — a deliberate bet that the way to make the district safer is to make its young people part of it.

The coalition arrives at a hard moment for the neighborhood. The First Friday Foundation announced on Wednesday, October 14, that it is pausing the monthly event, canceling November's gathering while the city, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police and the foundation review security, Focal News reported. For shops that count on First Friday crowds heading into the holiday shopping season, the pause is both understandable and expensive. The owners' response has been to build something that does not depend on the festival's calendar at all.

"We need to welcome them in"

Jocelyn Poirier, who owns The Honeypot, a Main Street shop selling crystals and decor, helped form the coalition. Poirier told Focal News the effort is meant to build relationships between young people and neighborhood businesses, and that she was once a troubled youth herself who needed a mentor. "We need to welcome them in. We need to show them better," Poirier told Focal News. "If we make them feel like they are a part of our community then they will want to protect that community."

Poirier put the same point more personally to FOX5: "So I want to help, I want to give back, and I feel like I have a lot of insight that I could help these kids with," she told the station. Her plan is practical, not ceremonial — she told FOX5 she will teach participants the basics of running a business inside her own store: "I'll teach them how to build their Instagram, how to open a business license, like the simple things, the little steps, and then from there, how to build the relationship with their customers, how to market their products."

How the coalition will work

The structure, as the owners described it to FOX5 and Focal News, runs on connection rather than programming. Clark County's gang intervention team, which has done this work for years, will have a member helping connect youth to the participating businesses, FOX5 reported. Juan Torres told FOX5 that if businesses choose to have young people come and help, "we can pay for their wages for up to six months with one of our community partners" — removing the cost barrier that might otherwise keep a small shop from saying yes to a teenager it does not know.

The coalition can already point to the pathway it hopes to widen. Dearion Rivera, 17, shared his story with FOX5 as one of its early success stories: "So, well, obviously, I came from that situation. I was caught up in the streets," Rivera told the station. At 17, he already operates his own pavement-marking and curb-lettering business, and he told FOX5 he is working to give other kids spaces in local businesses to express themselves. Eighteen-year-old Kadyn Phillips found the program through a community service list after, he told FOX5, going through some 30 places that never answered; The Honeypot answered, and Phillips now resells clothing and says he is thinking about starting his own business.

Karina Carancho, who owns PLUR City on Commerce Street — a shop selling rave accessories including bracelets, masks and backpacks — told Focal News she chose the Arts District because she wanted her store to be part of the neighborhood, and that First Friday brings attention and customers to small businesses that might otherwise miss out on its foot traffic. "First Friday is all about supporting local businesses so, unfortunately, it is the local small businesses out here that are going to be affected the most," Carancho told Focal News. Carancho, a mother of two teenagers, also told Focal News that exposure to art, local shops and community events matters for young people — and that canceling events should not be the only response to violence. In the meantime, Focal News reported, district businesses are drawing visitors with their own efforts outside First Friday, including storefront pop-ups, wine walks and art walks, as the holiday season approaches — the same creative energy downtown showed today at the Las Vegas Book Festival's 25th year.

The night that changed the district

The coalition exists because of October 2. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police said gunfire broke out at about 10:17 p.m. near Main Street and West Charleston Boulevard after a fight between attendees escalated, Focal News reported. Jacobs-Rodgers, 15, was killed; the other two victims were treated at University Medical Center and later released, police told Focal News, which also reported that police have described the shooting as gang-related.

Police arrested Isaac Manriquez, 17, on October 6 after investigators linked him to the shooting through a wallet recovered at the scene, Focal News reported. A Clark County judge signed an order the following day directing that he be held at the Clark County Detention Center to face the charges as an adult. He is in custody facing one count of open murder with the use of a deadly weapon and two counts of attempted murder with the use of a deadly weapon, bail was denied, and his next court appearance is scheduled for November 17, according to Focal News. The charges are allegations, and the case remains before the court.

A pause the mayor supports

City Hall is backing the breathing room. Mayor Shelley Berkley, speaking on October 13 as the pause was being discussed, told Focal News: "It's a fabulous event. We're not ending it. It's too much fun and it's too important for the city to end it, but we have to ensure that it is safe for everybody." Berkley later called the pause a "very wise" response, Focal News reported, and said the city, Metro Police and the First Friday Foundation are working to prevent a similar incident, with officials reopening the festival only when they are confident they can keep attendees safe. A return could come as soon as December, Focal News reported, though January 2027 is also possible.

What changes during the pause is still undecided. State Sen. Fabian Doñate has said the event should move toward a more contained setup on Main Street — limiting vehicle access, installing deployable barriers and controlling entry — and has raised age verification and advanced detection systems as options where appropriate, Focal News reported. Berkley has said the goal is not to bar teenagers from downtown events, a point the coalition's whole design underlines: the district's shop owners are arguing, with their own time and storefronts, that teenagers are not the problem to be kept out of First Friday's future — they are the people that future has to include. Some artists and businesses temporarily shut down after the shooting, and others said they would not return until they felt safe, Focal News reported; the foundation, for its part, thanked the artists and owners who have made First Friday a fixture in the city for 24 years and urged residents to keep supporting local artists and one another.

November will be quieter on Main Street this year. What the Arts District does with the quiet is now the story: ten shops, a county intervention team, a wage partner and a group of owners who decided that the most useful thing a neighborhood can hand a kid at risk is not a warning, but a way in. More coverage of downtown and the Arts District is on Previously's news front.