The Sept. 1 deaths of Nohani Flores Osuna and her children have led to 13 felony charges against her boyfriend.
LAS VEGAS, Nev. — They were a mother, a high school student and a 7-year-old boy who had been living in a Las Vegas apartment for only a few months before all three were found fatally shot inside the home on Sept. 1.
Nohani Flores Osuna, 41, her daughter Maiya Deleon Flores, 16, and her son Noah Morales Flores, 7, were identified by the Clark County coroner after police found them in an apartment in the 5100 block of O’Bannon Drive. Flores Osuna’s boyfriend, Juan Carlos Orona, 29, is accused in their deaths. He faces three counts of open murder with use of a deadly weapon and 10 counts of discharging a firearm inside a structure. He remains jailed without bail and is scheduled for a preliminary hearing Oct. 21.
Much of what is publicly known about the family comes from the official response to their deaths rather than from relatives, who have largely stayed out of public view. Family members attended court when Orona appeared before a judge in September but declined to speak with reporters afterward. The Clark County School District confirmed that Maiya attended Bonanza High School. Local reporting said the family had moved into the apartment complex about two or three months before the shooting. Authorities have released little additional biographical information about Flores Osuna or her children.
The first public account did not identify them by name. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police said a man arrived at or contacted the department’s Southeast Area Command at about 7:10 p.m. Sept. 1 and reported that he had shot his girlfriend and her two children. Police later identified that man as Orona. He provided an apartment address on O’Bannon Drive, prompting officers to respond there while other officers took him into custody. Inside the residence, officers found a woman, a teenage girl and a young boy with apparent gunshot wounds. Medical personnel pronounced all three dead.
Orona was not uninjured. Officers at the police facility noticed what the department described as an apparent gunshot wound, and he was taken to a hospital before being booked. Police said the injury was not life-threatening. Lt. Robert Price later described it as superficial and said investigators had not determined how Orona received it or whether it was self-inflicted. The unanswered question about that wound was among several details that homicide detectives were still working to reconstruct after the killings.
Police records described the deaths as emerging from a conflict in a relatively new romantic relationship. According to an arrest report cited by local news organizations, Orona told detectives that he and Flores Osuna had been together for between three and six months. He said he had helped her obtain the apartment and had paid rent. On the day of the shootings, Orona told police, he saw Flores Osuna’s vehicle near a vehicle belonging to a former boyfriend. That observation led to a confrontation later at the apartment.
The arrest report says Orona questioned Flores Osuna about whether she was seeing the former boyfriend. Investigators wrote that she acknowledged the relationship and made a sexual comparison between the two men. Orona said that after hearing her answer, he “blacked out.” He told detectives that when he became aware of his surroundings again, he was in a bathroom holding a Glock 9 mm handgun and Flores Osuna and her children were on the floor. The account is an allegation recorded by investigators and has not been tested at trial.
Physical evidence described in the police report gives investigators another part of the case. Officers recovered 10 spent 9 mm cartridge cases inside the apartment, according to reports based on the arrest document. Orona allegedly told detectives that he could remember Flores Osuna and the children yelling at him or moving toward him at some point during the period he otherwise said he could not recall. He did not provide a complete sequence of the shootings. Police have not publicly released a detailed forensic reconstruction establishing the order in which the three family members were shot.
Orona also told investigators he had kept the handgun for protection because he feared Flores Osuna’s former boyfriend could come to the apartment and harm him. Authorities have not alleged that the former boyfriend took part in the shooting or was present when the family was killed. The man was identified only by a first name in accounts of the arrest report. The investigation described publicly has focused on Orona’s actions and his statements before and after he surrendered.
Those statements extended beyond his police interview. Orona’s father told investigators that his son had contacted family members and admitted hurting Flores Osuna and the children, according to the arrest report. The father said Orona described losing control during the confrontation. He told his son that he needed to turn himself in and accept responsibility, the report says. Orona’s father and brother then drove him to the Southeast Area Command, where the criminal investigation shifted almost immediately from an emergency response to a homicide case.
The family’s deaths drew a stark assessment from police that night. Price said investigators regarded the shooting as an isolated incident and did not believe there was an ongoing threat to the surrounding neighborhood. He also placed the case within a recurring problem faced by homicide detectives, saying domestic violence is among the department’s leading circumstances in homicide investigations. The remark did not establish a legal motive or determine Orona’s guilt, but it showed how police initially classified the relationship context surrounding the killings.
Orona made an initial court appearance Sept. 3, when a judge found probable cause for his arrest and ordered him held without bail. At a later appearance Sept. 9, Justice of the Peace Amy Wilson acknowledged the deaths of three people, including two children, and the grief of their relatives. She also told Orona that the proceeding marked the beginning of the formal court process and that he was entitled to the same constitutional protections as any other defendant. When Orona said he could not afford private counsel, the court appointed a public defender.
The charge of open murder allows the state to proceed without the initial charging document settling every question about the degree of murder prosecutors may ultimately seek to prove. What is clear at this stage is narrower: prosecutors accuse Orona of killing all three members of the family with a firearm and of firing 10 shots inside the residence. The defense has not publicly laid out its theory of the case, and the meaning of Orona’s reported claim that he lost memory of the shooting has not been adjudicated.
For the victims’ relatives, the court case now moves on a different timetable from the loss itself. Flores Osuna, Maiya and Noah died Sept. 1, while hearings, evidence disputes and other proceedings may continue for months or longer. The Oct. 21 preliminary hearing will address whether the state has enough evidence for the felony prosecution to advance. It will not decide whether Orona is guilty, nor will it answer every question about what happened inside the apartment that evening.
For the relatives of Flores Osuna, Maiya and Noah, the next court date comes nearly two months after three members of their family were killed in the home they shared. Their relatives have largely declined public comment while attending the early proceedings. Orona remains in custody without bail, and the Oct. 21 preliminary hearing will mark the next public stage of the prosecution arising from the three deaths.
Author note: Last updated October 20, 2026.