A man suspected of killing his girlfriend and hiding her body in the attic for two days has been arrested after a witness told police about the shooting and the man’s plans to dispose of the body.
James Gina, 50, was arrested Monday after he was found with the body of his girlfriend inside a home in the 1600 block of Golden Arrow Drive, near Maryland Parkway and Desert Inn Road, according to an arrest report from the Metropolitan Police Department released Friday.
A man went to a Metropolitan Police command Monday afternoon to report what he had seen.
He told police that Gina and his girlfriend, Celina Rebholz, 27, had been fighting on Saturday when Gina told him: “I’ll give you three if you don’t shut up.”
The witness left and went to play, but when he returned, he told police that Gina was “acting frantic and distraught,” and asked the man if he could help him save Rebholz. She was alive, but naked, with a bullet hole in her chest, gurgling blood on Gina’s bedroom floor.
According to the arrest report, Gina told the man the next day that she put Rebholz’s lifeless body in the attic. She asked the man to take him and her mother to a car rental company so she could rent a car with her credit card.
“(The man) assumed that Gina was going to use the rental car to move Celina’s body,” detectives wrote in the report.
Gina’s mother told the police that they needed to rent a car because all their cars were disabled. She said Gina accidentally shot the woman while she was playing with a gun.
Gina was arrested Monday night and refused to speak to police. She is being held without bail and is expected to appear in court again for a preliminary hearing on September 5.
Gina has a criminal record in Clark County dating back to 2002, including multiple domestic violence cases and five felony convictions, court records show. Her first arrest in the county was in 2002 for misdemeanor domestic violence, in a case that was later dismissed.
He pleaded guilty to felony charges including assault resulting in grievous bodily injury constituting domestic violence, assault resulting in grievous bodily injury, coercion constituting domestic violence, and possession of a stolen vehicle.
His most recent felony conviction was last year, when he pleaded guilty to operating a junkyard, according to court records.
