Ex-Metro Officer Pleads Guilty to Stalking; Police Said He Made a Hit List of People He Blamed for His Brother's Suicide

The short version: A Las Vegas police officer's 26-year career has ended in a guilty plea. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on Monday that former Metro officer Jason De La Garrigue has pleaded guilty to stalking, in a case where, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, police said he made a hit list of people he blamed for his brother's suicide. De La Garrigue has since retired from the department, his attorney told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The plea closes the criminal case that began with his arrest in April on eight felony counts of aggravated stalking, as FOX5 reported at the time — a case built around alleged death threats against eight people, in several states, over a span stretching back to 2024.

What police said he did

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, police said De La Garrigue compiled a list targeting the people he held responsible for his brother's suicide. Gambling News, summarizing the police arrest report, reported that the list named five primary targets — former high-school acquaintances from Apple Valley, California, whom he blamed for bullying his brother during his teenage years — and that the case involved eight alleged victims in total, the remaining three being relatives of some of the primary targets. The arrest report described repeated and increasingly severe death threats against people living in different states, running from sometime in 2024 through April 2026, and a plan to travel and murder several of the people on the list, according to Gambling News. Investigators said all eight victims feared for their safety. Those were the allegations as police laid them out in the spring; the guilty plea reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Monday is the first resolution of them in court.

The arrest

FOX5 reported that De La Garrigue was arrested on Saturday, April 11, and booked into the Clark County Detention Center on eight counts of aggravated stalking. He was 47 years old, had worked for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department for 26 years — since 2000, according to FOX5 — and was assigned to the Airport Bureau, a high-visibility post at Harry Reid International Airport. Metro suspended him without pay as the investigation continued, FOX5 reported. In his first court appearance days later, a judge set his bail at $1 million, and FOX5 reported at the time that a judge was scheduled to decide on July 28 whether there was enough evidence to send the case to trial. A million-dollar bond is a signal in itself: judges set bail that high when they see flight risk, danger, or both, and the allegations here — a serving officer, a written list, victims in multiple states — gave the court plenty to weigh.

The bail fight

The defense pushed back on that number within weeks. Gambling News reported that Judge Nadia Wood lowered De La Garrigue's bail to $250,000, down from $1 million, after hearing arguments from his attorney, David Roger, from the prosecutor, and from testimony by individuals who said they were stalked. In his filing, Roger described a tragic family background that he argued was a significant factor in the case, and said De La Garrigue had been drinking heavily on April 9 — two days before his arrest — in a way that interacted with his prescription medications, worsened his mental condition and impaired his ability to think and behave rationally, according to Gambling News. Judge Wood ordered strict conditions if bail were posted: electronic monitoring, no possession of weapons, and permission to leave his residence only for court hearings or meetings with his attorney. In other words, even at the lower bail figure, the court treated him as a man who needed watching.

From standoff to plea

What changed between the spring and this week is that the case will not go to a jury. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Monday that De La Garrigue has pleaded guilty to stalking, and that he has since retired from Metro, according to his attorney — so whatever his status was during the suspension in April, he is a former officer now. A guilty plea in a case like this spares eight alleged victims the prospect of testifying about threats made against them, and it spares the department a trial in which its own veteran officer would have been the defendant in a stalking case built from his own department's arrest report. The details that a plea usually settles — which counts stand, what sentence he faces, and when he will be sentenced — will come from the court record as the case moves to sentencing, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal's reporting is the source to watch for them; this article does not guess at terms the court has not yet made public in the reporting available to us.

Why this case landed differently in Las Vegas

Stalking cases are frightening in any city. This one cut deeper in Las Vegas because of who the defendant was: a 26-year veteran of the force residents call when they are the ones being followed, threatened or watched, assigned to the airport bureau where officers are the visible face of public safety for millions of visitors. The arrest report's account — a hit list drawn up over a grievance reaching back to a brother's suicide at least a decade earlier, threats spanning state lines, eight people afraid for their safety — describes a long, private spiral inside a very public uniform. Metro acted quickly in April, suspending him without pay the weekend of the arrest, as FOX5 reported, and the courts acted heavily, with the million-dollar bail. The plea reported this week is the system finishing that arc.

What happens next

Sentencing is the remaining step, and with it the formal end of De La Garrigue's case — and, with his retirement, of his career. The conditions Judge Wood set in the spring, including the weapons prohibition and electronic monitoring, frame how the court continues to view the risk while he awaits that date. For the eight people named in the arrest report, the plea means the threats case is resolved without a trial; for Metro, it means a painful internal chapter closes with a conviction rather than a verdict fight. We will update our Las Vegas coverage in the Local News hub as the court sets a sentencing date and the terms of the plea are entered into the public record.