Prosecutors said he left school during first period in 2021, entered a stranger’s home and stabbed the victim before going back to class.

LAS VEGAS — A Las Vegas man has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in a random 2021 stabbing inside a Summerlin home, resolving a case that prosecutors said began when he slipped out of high school during first period and returned before the day was over.

The plea by Ethan Goin, now 21, set the case on track for an agreed 18-year prison sentence, according to courtroom reporting and local accounts. The victim, 48-year-old Vergel Guintu, was killed Aug. 27, 2021, after Goin left school, walked into Guintu’s home on Kenton Place and stabbed him in the neck. The killing was not tied to robbery, a personal feud or a known dispute. That randomness gave the case unusual weight from the start and kept it in public attention as competency litigation and delays stretched it across several years.

Police said Goin was 16 when he left class that morning and entered Guintu’s home while family members were inside. Public reports said he chose the house at random. At some point during the intrusion, he stabbed Guintu in the neck with a knife, then left and went back to school. The violence was brief, but its effect was permanent. Guintu died, and his family was left to explain how a stranger could enter the home and kill him in the middle of a school day. Investigators later said Goin told others he had “done something bad,” a statement that became one of the most memorable details in the case because it captured both the immediacy of the act and the youth of the person accused of carrying it out.

The legal path that followed was unusually long for a single-count homicide case. Reports said Goin was found incompetent at one stage and later restored to competency, delaying trial preparations. By early 2026, a murder trial had been scheduled to begin in March. Instead, Goin pleaded guilty before Clark County District Judge Carli Kierny to second-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon. Courtroom coverage said prosecutors and defense lawyers agreed the sentence would total 18 years. That deal avoided a trial where jurors would likely have heard evidence about Goin’s age at the time of the killing, his mental health history and the apparently motiveless nature of the attack.

The facts that have remained public present a stark and unsettling sequence. This was a school day. The victim was in his own home. The defendant was a teenager who, by the state’s account, made time for a killing between classes. That timeline helped make the case one of the more chilling random homicides in Las Vegas in recent years. It also stripped away many of the usual explanations that appear in homicide cases. There was no indication that Goin knew Guintu. Public reporting did not describe a domestic conflict, a gang connection or a planned robbery. The state’s case instead rested on the idea of a senseless intrusion that turned lethal almost immediately.

The plea resolves the central criminal charge but leaves some human questions unanswered. Public records still do not fully explain why Guintu’s house was chosen or what, if anything, Goin was thinking in the minutes before he entered. The agreed sentence gives Guintu’s family a measure of finality without another delay, while sparing the state the burden of proving every detail at trial after years of competency proceedings. The court is expected to formally impose the 18-year term at sentencing, bringing the trial-court phase of a long-running and deeply unusual case close to an end.

Goin has admitted guilt and is awaiting final sentencing under the plea agreement. The next milestone is the formal entry of the 18-year prison sentence in Clark County court.

Author note: Last updated March 15, 2026.