Helena Wegner
The Charlotte Observer
An off-duty Washington officer was fatally stabbed after he got into an argument over petting a man’s dogs, police said.
Tyler Steffins, an officer for the Edmonds Police Department, was on the Las Vegas Strip on March 25 when he grabbed the dogs’ faces “aggressively,” the Las Vegas Police Department said in a probable cause statement.
The dog’s owner was upset by how Steffins grabbed his dogs, police said.
Then the next day, Steffins walked by the man and stopped to pet his dogs again, police said.
The man told the officer not to be “rough” with his animals, but police said Steffins began petting them “aggressively,” and he was asked to stop.
Steffins and the dog owner began arguing, police said, and at one point, Steffins told the man to “get a job.”
Freddy Allen had been with the man and his dogs since the beginning of their interaction, police said.
Allen approached Steffins while he argued with the other man and stabbed the officer on the left side of his chest before running away, police said.
Steffins said “I think he just stabbed me” before taking off his shirt and falling to the ground, police said. He was not armed during the incident, police said.
Police said they saw Allen running with a knife shortly after the stabbing before he threw it into a fountain. The knife was a 6-inch hunting knife with a fixed blade, police said.
Allen was arrested on a charge of open murder with a deadly weapon, police said.
An open murder charge in Nevada means a person has been charged with a “general allegation” of murder and is waiting for a judge or jury to decide the offense level.
Steffins was an officer with the Edmonds Police Department since 2018, the department said in a Facebook post. He was also a Marine veteran.
“Tyler was a valued member of our police family whose infectious smile and contagious laugh endeared him to his peers,” police Chief Michelle Bennett said. “We will miss him terribly but cherish the times we had with him.”
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