A Henderson, Nevada, transgender woman is facing dozens of felony charges after police say they found her sitting in a stolen car loaded with guns in a casino parking garage, uncovering what investigators described as a stockpile of weapons and a history of threats to carry out a mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip.
Allison Howlett, 36, was arrested Saturday after Henderson police received a 911 call reporting a domestic dispute. According to Henderson Police Chief Reggie Rader, the caller told dispatchers her ex-spouse, Ms. Howlett, had stolen her car — loaded with firearms — and had made threats of “suicide by cop” and a mass shooting.
Using vehicle-tracking technology, officers located the car in the parking garage at Sunset Station hotel-casino, where Howlett was taken into custody after a standoff. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Ms. Howlett briefly stepped out of the vehicle before officers fired a less-lethal round that missed, then pulled her from the driver’s side window less than 10 minutes later after a struggle. Review Journal
Mr. Rader said at a Tuesday news conference that Howlett had been sitting on a handgun, with a suppressed MP5-style machine gun within reach in the back seat — a detail he said corroborated the threats. A search of the vehicle turned up 22 firearms, along with suppressors, high-capacity magazines and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, FOX5 Las Vegas reported. A subsequent search of the Henderson home Howlett shared with the gun owner turned up roughly 30 more firearms, including an M2 .50-caliber machine gun, rifles fitted with grenade launchers and additional suppressors.
Metropolitan Police Department Assistant Sheriff Dori Koren said investigators, working with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, uncovered evidence that Howlett had made threats “over an extended period of time,” including a 2024 recording in which she warned of a “massacre” if the FBI did not arrest her. Mr. Koren invoked the 2017 Route 91 Harvest festival shooting — still the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history — in explaining why authorities treated the threats so seriously.
Ms. Howlett was arraigned Wednesday on 35 felony counts, including assault with a deadly weapon constituting domestic violence, grand larceny of a motor vehicle, 21 counts of grand larceny of a firearm, eight counts of possession of a machine gun or silencer and four counts of possession of a short-barreled rifle or shotgun, according to her criminal complaint. Though Henderson police announced Tuesday that Howlett had also been arrested on suspicion of making a threat related to an act of terrorism and resisting a public officer with a firearm, the Review-Journal reported that neither charge was included in Wednesday’s complaint, and the Clark County district attorney’s office did not say whether prosecutors still intend to pursue them.
A Clark County judge set Ms. Howlett’s bail at $500,000, with high-level electronic monitoring, a weapons ban and a no-contact order tied to the case’s domestic violence victim.
Julie Howlett — described in the Review-Journal’s reporting on the arrest report as Ms. Howlett’s wife — later told FOX5 in an exclusive interview that all 22 firearms recovered from the vehicle belonged to her, saying she works as a gun dealer and was preparing to transport the inventory out of state. She said the confrontation began after she discovered Ms. Howlett using her credit card without permission and that Howlett came at her with a gun before fleeing in the loaded vehicle. Ms. Howlett told detectives in a recorded interview that she took the car simply to leave after an argument, and denied ever threatening a mass shooting, telling investigators that users of the online platform Discord had fabricated the accusations against her, according to the Review-Journal.
Undersheriff Andrew Walsh warned that the window between a threat and an attack has narrowed considerably, urging anyone who hears credible threats of violence — particularly in domestic situations — to report them immediately.
If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.
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