Former Republican candidate for the US House of Representatives is charged with murder
A Republican candidate who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in Nevada in 2020 with the support of President Donald J. Trump surrendered to police Wednesday after being accused of killing a man in Las Vegas last year, they said. his lawyers.
Las Vegas police issued an arrest warrant earlier on Wednesday for former candidate Daniel Rodimer, 45, a former professional wrestler, after he was accused of killing Christopher Tapp, 47, at a Las Vegas Strip resort on 29 October.
Medical responders found Mr Tapp “suffering from injuries resulting from an alleged accident” and took him to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. said in a statement.
Homicide detectives learned that Mr. Tapp had “had an altercation in a room” at the resort, the statement said. The Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled that Mr. Tapp died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head.
A criminal complaint accuses Mr. Rodimer of hitting Mr. Tapp in the head and says the killing was “intentional, deliberate and premeditated.”
Mr. Rodimer’s lawyers, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, said in a statement that Mr. Rodimer “has voluntarily surrendered, posted bond and plans to vigorously defend the case.”
Mr. Rodimer, who grew up in New Jersey, played up his brash personality and a brief wrestling stint with World Wrestling Entertainment in failed bids for political office.
After losing a race for Nevada State Senate in 2018, Mr. Rodimer entered the 2020 Republican primary for a Nevada congressional seat.
During the race, in 2019, The Associated Press reported that, according to Florida court records and sheriff’s office documents, Mr. Rodimer was accused of punching or throwing someone to the ground in three separate disputes at nightclubs and restaurants between 2010 and 2013.
In one of the cases, from 2010, Mr. Rodimer pleaded guilty to a battery charge and completed a six-week anger management course in exchange for charges being dropped, the AP reported. No charges were filed in the other two cases.
Mr. Rodimer, who called himself “Big Dan,” defeated five candidates to win the Republican primary in Nevada’s Third Congressional District in June 2020. In October 2020, Mr Trump won wrote on Twitter that “Dan has my complete and total approval!”
Mr. Rodimer won more than 45 percent of the vote in the general election, losing to the incumbent Democrat, Rep. Susie Lee, by fewer than 13,000 votes.
Less than a year later, Mr. Rodimer ran for Congress again, this time in a crowded special election in Texas’ Sixth Congressional District, which was left vacant after the death of Representative Ron Wright, a Republican, in February 2021.
Mr. Rodimer promoted his past endorsement from Mr. Trump and appeared in a bull-riding campaign ad speak with a Texan twist. He received less than 3 percent of the vote and finished 11th in a field of 23 candidates vying for a spot in a runoff.
A spokesperson for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Mr. Tapp had lived through a legal nightmare before his death.
In 2019, after spending more than two decades in prison, he was acquitted for the 1996 rape and murder of an 18-year-old woman in Idaho Falls, Idaho. It was the first time genetic genealogy, a technique that identifies suspects by matching crime scene DNA with family members, was used to clear the name of a convicted murderer. the Innocence Project.
Another man, Brian Leigh Dripps Sr., later confessed to killing the teen, Angie Dodge, and was sentenced to life in prison in 2021.