A Las Vegas man, with a lengthy criminal history, has been accused of shooting his girlfriend 12 times and hiding her body for 2 days.
According to officials from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police, 50-year-old James Gina III was arrested last Monday (August 14) on a murder charge after police found his deceased girlfriend in his home. The victim has since been identified in an arrest report as Celina Rebholz.
Around 7:30 p.m. on August 14, police found Rebholz on a coach in Gina’s room covered with a blanket. Officials discovered that she had been shot 12 times, and that several defects on the couch she was laying on were consistent with the bullet holes she suffered.
Police claim to have made the discovery as Gina tried to move his girlfriend’s lifeless body after killing her two days prior. Police said that they received a tip about five hours before they arrested Gina for the homicide that had occurred in the 1600 block of Golden Arrow, near Desert Inn and Maryland Parkway.
The person who tipped off officials at an LVMPD substation told police that they even feared for their own life while reporting the killing of Rebholz. Two days prior (on August 12), the tipster said that Gina had threatened his girlfriend’s life during a verbal argument.
Allegedly, Gina, who has a lengthy criminal history, said, “I’ll put three in you,” in reference to him wanting to shoot her three times. The tipster added that they left the apartment and when they returned three hours later, Gina reportedly appeared “frantic and distraught,” as his girlfriend laid on the floor of a bedroom with a bullet hole in chest, but still alive.
The tipster claimed that they wanted to call 911 and have the Rebholz rushed to a hospital in an ambulance, but they fled the scene in fear because “he didn’t know what to do and could not deal with the situation.”
The tipster said that when they returned to the apartment the following day, the girlfriend was no longer alive, and Gina told them that he put her body in the attic of the home. In addition to allegedly hiding the victim’s body, Gina is accused of grabbing a rental car, with intentions of using it to move the woman’s body.
Reportedly, LVMPD officials also interviewed two other people familiar with the incident, and they both supported the tipster’s reports. One of the two witnesses told police that Gina texted him after the shooting, “She’s gone, she’s dead.” However, the person said they deleted the text messages because he didn’t want anything related to the murder on his phone.
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The witness also said that Gina asked him for a ride to the airport, which is where he got the rental car. Gina reportedly told the witness he didn’t want to use his own car to move his girlfriend’s lifeless body because she “was beginning to emit a foul odor.”
The second witness, who supported the original tipster’s reports, said Gina told her that he was playing around with a gun and accidentally shot his girlfriend. However, when police interrogated Gina himself, he claimed that he did not want to give any statements.
On Thursday (August 17), Gina pleaded not guilty to shooting his girlfriend and hiding her body. He has since been denied bail and a preliminary hearing has been scheduled for September 5.
Elsewhere, it is reported that Gina has a criminal history in Clark County, dating back more than two decades. Since 2022, he has been hit with a slew of charges. In his first arrest in the county, he faced misdemeanor charges of domestic violence, which were later dropped. In his most recent conviction last year, he pleaded guilty to operating a chop shop.
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