911 call captures what man told dispatcher before shooting

An emergency call from the 40-year-old man who shot his parents at an apartment near UNLV sheds light on his mental state before he turned a gun on himself.

The 911 call, obtained through a public records request, captured Abdelhafiz Abdelgader telling a dispatcher on Sept. 16 that he had just killed his parents, Ibrahim Jihar, 69, and Jimea Mahmoud, 64, and that he no longer wanted to live. He added that he was living with pain in his back and shoulders, saying, “My body is broken now,” that he had previously lost his brother and that many people were giving him a hard time.

“I don’t want to live no more,” Abdelgader said. “That’s why I kill my family because they cannot — they lose my brother and now they will lose me too.”

The Metropolitan Police Department said it responded to the apartment on the 1600 block of East Rochelle Avenue, near East Flamingo Road and South Maryland Parkway, after receiving the 911 call.

During the nine-minute call, the dispatcher spoke with Abdelgader for more than 4 and a half minutes and tried to get him to put the gun away before the line went silent. About four minutes later, Metro officers can be heard attempting to breach the apartment before the call ends.

In a news release issued on Sept. 17, police said that several shots were heard after Abdelgader told the dispatcher he wanted to die.

When police entered the apartment, they found Jihar and Mahmoud already dead. Abdelgader was pronounced dead after emergency personnel transported him to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, police said.

Abdelgader told the dispatcher that he would leave money to cover the funeral expenses for his mother and father and offered to donate his body. He also said he wanted to leave a phone number for his sister, who was in Africa, and asked that she not be shown pictures.

“She’s the last one,” Abdelgader said.

Contributing factors

Several academic research studies have analyzed the correlation between chronic pain — defined by medical professionals as lasting longer than three months — and suicide.

For example, a study published in 2023 in The Journal of Pain by researchers from the United Kingdom, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University found that “living with chronic pain has been identified as a significant risk factor for suicide.”

“These findings, in tandem with the large body of research indicating that mental defeat is linked to increased suicide risks, underscore the need for clinicians working in clinical settings where patients living with chronic pain seek care to consider implementing routine screening for mental defeat to guide care planning,” the analysis stated.

Other studies have found rates of suicidal ideation ranging from 18-50 percent among patients experiencing chronic pain.

Another analysis published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2018 reviewed over a decade’s worth of data from the National Violent Death Reporting System and found that 8.8 percent of people who died by suicide had evidence of chronic pain.

Parricides remain rare

Parricides — the killing of one’s mother or father — represent about 2 percent of homicides in the U.S., while double parricides are even rarer, accounting for 10 percent of parricide cases, said Dr. Kathleen Heide, a criminology professor at the University of South Florida, licensed mental health counselor and author of “Understanding Parricide: When Sons and Daughters Kill Parents.”

There have been some higher-profile local tragedies more recently.

Last year, two Las Vegas teenagers were sentenced in separate cases for killing their respective fathers. In one case, a 12-year-old girl was sent to juvenile detention for fatally stabbing her father after a disagreement over discipline, court records showed.

In another, Lincoln Peterson received a sentence of six to 15 years after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter after he fatally shot his father, court records stated. Peterson, who was 15 at the time of the shooting, said he had attempted to flee his parents after his mother struck him with a belt before he picked up a gun lying atop a dryer and fired backward, according to an adult certification order. Peterson’s mother had told police the family had taken away his electronics because of declining grades. An argument ensued after she and her husband suspected that Peterson was “sneaking electronics,” she said.

It’s unclear if the Sept. 16 slaying of Jihar and Mahmoud fit the most common motive or pattern for parricides, experts said.

While close to 85 percent of all parricides are committed by men, Heide said assailants typically fit into four types: the severely abused offender, the severely mentally ill offender, the dangerously antisocial offender and the enraged offender.

Heide said abused offenders suffer from longstanding child maltreatment and have tried to get help but decide to kill either out of desperation to end the abuse or because they see no other way out. Mentally ill offenders are typically psychotic, often diagnosed along the schizophrenia spectrum or have a depressive disorder with psychotic features, she said.

Heide said antisocial offenders kill to achieve a selfish, instrumental goal and view a parent as an obstacle that he or she needs to remove.

Altruistic framing as a motivation is rare but could be distorted by a person’s suicidal ideations, Heide said.

“You hear of them, but they’re certainly not common,” Heide said. “You could look at it as the taking of a parent’s life to spare them pain could be altruistic, but it could also be delusional.”

If you’re thinking about suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, help is available 24/7 by calling or texting the Lifeline network at 988. Live chat is available at 988lifeline.org. Additionally, the Crisis Text Line is a free, national service available 24/7. Text HOME to 741741.