SCORE desert racer and Trophy Truck driver BJ Baldwin is cooperating with police after a fatal shooting last week in Las Vegas. Baldwin and his girlfriend had just finished eating a late dinner at approximately 2:00 a.m. April 22 and were standing near the trunk of Baldwin’s car when two men “approached quickly.”
“One of them had a gun pointed directly at the girlfriend and began to fire,” read a Baldwin Motorsports press release posted on #bjbaldwin’s Instagram page. “The girlfriend sought cover and the gunman then directed his attention to BJ and began to fire several times at BJ, who also sought cover. BJ, who possesses a valid concealed weapons permit, returned fire and the shooter went down.”
Las Vegas police homicide Lt. Ray Spencer told the Las Vegas Review Journal Friday in a text message that police believe the shooting was “clearly a case of self-defense.”
The man killed in the shooting was identified by the Clark County coroner’s office as Joseph Anthwone Smith, 43.
Separate from Baldwin’s press release, the Review Journal described the scene this way: “The couple had gotten food at an In-N-Out Burger restaurant and were parked in the parking lot, having dinner, when an altercation broke out with the men who had approached the vehicle.
“The man who was having dinner (Baldwin) and one of the other two men (Smith) brandished guns and started shooting. Smith died at the scene. The surviving shooter was not injured and called police shortly after the shooting.”
Baldwin is a leading driver in the SCORE International desert racing series, as well as in Best in the Desert and SNORE racing. He won SCORE Trophy Truck season points championships in 2006, 2008, 2012 and 2013. He won back-to-back SCORE Baja 1000s in 2012 and 2013, doing all the driving the whole way.
But Baldwin might be best known for his “Recoil” series of desert driving videos, the first of which garnered 21 million views, the second 37.3 million and so on.
An email sent to Baldwin had received no reply as of press time.
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