Nekiylo Dawayne Graves, 27, of Iowa, died Monday after contract security forces and a local sheriff’s deputy shot at him following an 8-mile car chase into the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), in Mercury, Nev.
In a Wednesday Facebook video, Nye County Sheriff Sharon Wehrly identified Graves as the deceased. She also identified Nye County Deputy Sheriff John Kakavulias as the sole involved member of her staff. Kakavulias is assigned to the Sheriff’s Office’s Mercury substation.
The Nevada National Security Administration’s (NNSA) Nevada field office, which released the first public statement about the incident on Monday, did not identify the contractor personnel involved with the incident. SOC of Chantilly, Va., is the NNSS protective forces contractor.
In Wehrly’s accounting of the incident, multiple protective forces contractors encountered Graves at 5:18 p.m. Pacific time on Monday, when the Iowa man drove through the site’s main gate in Mercury. Graves first “failed to stop” his car at the gate, then led NNSS protective forces contractors on an 8-mile chase into the roughly 1,360 square-mile site. Protective forces contacted Kakavulias for help, and Kakavulias “caught up” with the pursuit, Wehrly said.
Graves eventually stopped and exited his car, then approached NNSS protective forces and Kakavulias “with a cylindrical object in-hand [sic],” according to an NNSA statement. Graves advanced on Kakavulias and the contract security officers, refusing their verbal commands, Wehrly and the NNSA said.
At about 5:25 p.m., according to Wehrly, both Kakavulias and one NNSS protective forces contractor fired on Graves. He died on-site at about 5:53 p.m., Wehrly said.
Neither the NNSA nor the Sheriff’s Office specified how many times Graves was shot, or identified the object he carried. No one else was injured in the incident.
Wehrly said Nye County sheriff’s staff “are not approved” to wear body cameras on the Nevada National Security Site because of a “federal prohibition.”
An NNSA spokesperson in Nevada said the “Nye County Sheriff Office is responsible for law enforcement on the NNSS, thus their involvement.” The entire chase and shooting took place on federal property, the agency spokesperson and Wehrly said.
The semiautonomous NNSA oversees the Nevada National Security Site for the Department of Energy. The facility is the former Nevada Test Site, once used for above-ground and subterranean nuclear-explosive tests.
SOC’s NNSS protective forces contract, awarded in 2018, is worth up to $200 million over five years, with options. The contract is separate from Mission Support and Test Services’ NNSS site management and operations contract, which was awarded in 2017 and worth up to $5 billion over 10 years, with options.
SOC also provides protective forces at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee as a partner on the Bechtel-led prime contractor for that site, Consolidated Nuclear Security. SOC’s Y-12 work is contractually separate from its work at NNSS.
The NNSA said it notified the FBI about the fatal shooting. Wehrly said the FBI had arrived at the site and “is conducting the investigation into Graves’ actions.” The Nevada state Division of Investigation is conducting its own investigation into the shooting. Kakavulias was placed on paid administrative leave from the Sheriff’s Office, which is conducting an internal affairs investigation, Wehrly said.
