Detectives say a Nevada father who died after the shooting had been in a dispute involving his son’s maternal grandparents as authorities work to establish motive.
ELKO, Nev. — A custody dispute has emerged as a central line of inquiry in the investigation into the deaths of a father and his 11-year-old son at Elko Regional Airport, where police say the father shot the boy before killing himself.
Elko police identified the father as Giovanni Perez and the child as Callan Perez. Officers responded to the airport around midday Monday after emergency calls reported an active shooter. They found Giovanni Perez dead near the ticket counter and Callan wounded near a restroom, authorities said. The boy was taken to Northeastern Nevada Regional Hospital and later died. In the days since, investigators have released additional details suggesting the violence was tied not only to the pair’s travel through Elko, but also to a family conflict that had been building before they arrived.
According to police updates reported by regional news outlets, Giovanni and Callan Perez were traveling after their vehicle broke down in Winnemucca. Their car was towed to Elko, and detectives said the pair went to the airport while trying to continue on to Reno. At some point inside the terminal, the trip turned deadly. Witnesses led officers to the restroom area, where the child had been shot, and to the ticket counter area, where the father was found dead. The airport was closed while officers secured the building, searched connected property and tried to determine whether there was any continuing danger beyond the initial shooting scene.
Investigators later said Giovanni Perez had claimed to suffer from PTSD tied to military service and that he was in a custody dispute involving Callan’s maternal grandparents. Police said detectives learned he had been attempting to keep the child from both the maternal grandparents and members of his own family. Those statements did not establish motive on their own, and authorities have been careful not to say exactly what triggered the shooting. But they shifted the investigation away from a random act of violence and toward a family-centered case shaped by personal conflict, travel stress and unresolved questions about the father’s state of mind before the pair entered the airport.
The setting made the case especially jarring. Elko Regional Airport is a modest facility serving a small northeastern Nevada community, not the kind of place where residents expect a major homicide scene. That changed the scale of the response. Officers treated the initial calls as an active-shooter event, and the closure disrupted flights while the scene was processed. By Tuesday, officials said the airport would reopen and that scheduled service would resume. Even so, the reopening did little to blunt the force of the story locally: a child had been killed in a public travel hub, and investigators were still trying to explain how a family dispute ended there.
Because the suspected shooter is dead, the legal process will center on findings rather than prosecution. Detectives still must complete witness interviews, review travel records and family records, analyze forensic evidence and finalize the timeline from Winnemucca to Elko. That work could clarify how long the pair had been stranded, what arrangements they were making at the airport and whether any warning signs appeared before the shooting. Police have also indicated that they are continuing to examine statements about military service and mental health claims, though officials have not announced any final conclusions on those points.
For the community, the investigation has moved in two tracks at once. One is technical and procedural: evidence, interviews, movements, records. The other is more human, centered on the death of a child and the public shock that follows violence inside an everyday civic space. Each new police release has answered one question while opening others, especially around motive and the family relationships investigators now say mattered. The names, the travel route and the custody dispute have given the case sharper outlines, but the central fact remains stark and unresolved in emotional terms: a father and son arrived at an airport, and only one left alive for the hospital.
Authorities have said the investigation is ongoing and more details may be released as detectives complete their review. The next key step is a fuller accounting from Elko police or the medical examiner that could settle the remaining questions about motive, timing and the family conflict behind the shooting.
Author note: Last updated April 18, 2026.