Boulder City police arrested John Powell Morgan III on an open-murder warrant in the 2021 shooting of Scott Dingman.

Saturday's booking is an arrest on a warrant. Monday's $1 million bail is a release condition. Morgan told police the shooting was self-defense, the Boulder City Review reported, and that account is not a finding. The district attorney's office declined the case in 2021. KTNV reported a later decision not to file after a witness died, and a separate drug indictment. Those are not this charge, and none of them is a conviction.

FOX5 Las Vegas, citing the Boulder City Police Department, reported that detectives took John Powell Morgan III into custody on Oct. 24, 2026, at a car dealership in Henderson on an arrest warrant charging one count of open murder with the use of a deadly weapon, and that he was booked into the Clark County Detention Center. KTNV reported the same Saturday arrest at a Henderson car dealership, the same jail, and a warrant for open murder with a deadly weapon. Its opening line called the count one count of murder. The Boulder City Review, quoting the department's Saturday release, said detectives arrested him Saturday in Henderson on one count of open murder with the use of a deadly weapon. The Review did not print the words car dealership or Clark County Detention Center. Saturday was Oct. 24.

FOX5 reported authorities said the charge stems from a May 31, 2021 incident in which Scott Dingman was allegedly shot by Morgan in the roadway of Fairway Drive in Boulder City. KTNV reported Dingman was shot and killed in the roadway of Fairway Drive that day, and that Morgan claimed self-defense, which is why he was not charged at the time. The Boulder City Review placed the shooting on Fairway Drive near Pueblo Drive. The Las Vegas Review-Journal also used Fairway Drive near Pueblo Drive, and it reported Morgan is 40 and Dingman was 40. FOX5, KTNV, and the Boulder City Review did not print the ages.

The Boulder City Review printed this from the department's release: "Based on new information received in 2025, the case received another review by Boulder City Police investigators. In April 2025, Boulder City investigators executed a search warrant on Morgan III's residence, in which investigators recovered new evidence that supported additional investigation. Investigators continued their efforts over the next year, identifying pertinent information which ultimately led to development of probable cause for the arrest of Morgan III." FOX5 reported that sequence in paraphrase: new information in 2025, an April 2025 search that recovered evidence, and further work that established probable cause. KTNV quoted the last sentence and placed a comma after the word information. The Review's printing of the release has no comma there. The release, as those outlets printed it, does not say what the new evidence was.

KTNV reported Morgan appeared remotely at a Monday morning hearing and that Judge Gregory Mills set bail at $1 million. Monday was Oct. 26. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Justice of the Peace Gregor Mills set bail at $1 million Monday morning after Saturday's arrest, and its caption said Morgan appeared by conference call. Gregory and Gregor are not the same spelling, and the two outlets did not use the same title. This story does not choose between them. The Review-Journal reported defense attorney Louis Schneider said Morgan is wrongly accused, that the case is ripe with conflicts of interest, and that multiple law enforcement agencies previously concluded the shooting was self-defense. That is the lawyer's statement.

The Boulder City Review reported that Morgan had admitted to police that he shot Dingman and said he did so in self-defense after Dingman punched him in the face and drew a firearm following heavy drinking. It reported a police report said Dingman came at him with clenched fists, then pulled out a pistol and pointed it at his chest, and that Morgan said he pleaded for Dingman to stop, grabbed his own gun, and "fired first." The Review reported the Clark County coroner's office ruled the death a homicide from gunshot wounds to the chest and groin, and that the district attorney's office declined to prosecute after Boulder City police submitted the case in September 2021. The self-defense account is what he told police. The coroner's homicide ruling is a manner-of-death finding. The 2021 declination is a decision not to file at that time. Saturday's charge is not a verdict.

KTNV reported that during the April 2025 search, officers found cocaine "in plain view on a countertop in a bedroom," a digital scale, and numerous small baggies, seized about 30 grams of cocaine, and arrested him. It reported he was indicted in February on possession of cocaine with intent to sell and on maintaining an illegal dwelling, accused of using his Boulder City home to sell drugs. It did not print the year of that indictment. Those counts are accusations in a drug case. They are not the open-murder warrant. KTNV reported it first reported the shooting in July 2025 after Dingman's family accused Boulder City police of negligence and incompetence, and that the homicide case was reopened after that reporting. It reported the family's allegations include officers contaminating evidence, failing to document key crime scene information, and withholding details of a homicide investigation. Those are allegations. Ashley Dingman, his widow, told KTNV she was grateful the case had moved forward, that she still has serious concerns about the original investigation, that those concerns are part of a civil rights lawsuit, and that she was grateful to Sgt. Chris Slack and James Garcia. The lawsuit is her description of a filing. It is not a judgment in the murder case.

KTNV reported that in September, after the case had been reopened, Steve Wolfson's office decided not to file charges because Mike Henn, who witnessed the shooting, had died, and that the station later learned the investigation was still open. Saturday's arrest is the warrant booking that followed. The September 2021 declination and the later decision KTNV described are two different decisions not to charge. They are not acquittals. Monday's bail is not a plea. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.