Inset: Allysandra Blea (Law&Crime Network). Background: The block in Las Vegas where Blea allegedly shot and killed her friend last week (Google Maps).
A 20-year-old Nevada woman has admitted to gunning down a friend during a firearm photo shoot after he “disgusted” her by calling the woman his girlfriend.
“I always wondered how he talks about me to his friends,” Allysandra Blea told friend and shooting witness Maverick Crafts about victim Mark Gaughan, 23, of Las Vegas, according to grand jury transcripts. “I don”t understand why he thinks I’m his girlfriend, I don’t like him like that,” Crafts recalled her saying.
Blea, who is also from Las Vegas, was “disgusted to hear that [Gaughan] would call her his girlfriend,” according to Crafts. She pleaded guilty Tuesday to shooting Gaughan in August 2025 while he was taking photos of her posing with a gun in a “Halloween costume” and “bloody corset,” per the grand jury transcripts.
“She was just using him,” Crafts said about Blea and Gaughan. “He thought they were [dating]. … He would call her his girlfriend.”
Asked how Blea and Gaughan acted around each other, Crafts said, “It wasn’t really affectionate. It was just kind of hanging out.”
Prosecutors said Blea, who pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and kidnapping, had a “fascination with firearms” and a “love of shooting guns.” She was known to pose with them regularly for photos, which were then posted online — including pictures of Blea with “handguns, revolvers and rifles,” according to an arrest affidavit obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
“There were several photographs of Allysandra holding various firearms … in different poses to include the firearm pressed against her head, against stuffed animals’ heads and shooting bottles at an unknown location,” the affidavit reportedly said.
Police also said that in one online comment, Blea wrote, “I wish I could shoot people with real guns and get away with it.”
According to a news release from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, officers responded to a call reporting a man being shot in the 1000 block of Nassau Drive at about 4:47 a.m. on Aug. 23. Blea placed the 911 call and told the emergency dispatcher that it was an “accidental shooting,” Las Vegas CBS affiliate KLAS reported.
Upon arriving at the address, first responders found Gaughan lying outside on the sidewalk and suffering from what appeared to be a gunshot wound to the neck. Police rendered lifesaving aid until emergency medical personnel arrived and took over. Gaughan died from the injury and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Gaughan was taking Polaroid photos of both Crafts and Blea that night.
“We have a deer head on the wall so since she was in camo and bloody we decided like we’d be like hunters with the deer,” Crafts recounted in court, according to the grand jury transcripts. “Once Mark says that there’s two photos left we decided to go outside to change the background. … So I see the flash go off from Mark in front of me and I’m watching Mark the whole time. I see the photo start printing out. And then Ally moves next to me and then there’s another flash goes off and it’s really loud this time and Mark and the camera fall.”
A fourth individual sleeping in the home at the time told police he had previously worked at a gun store and remembered “removing the magazine and clearing the chamber” on the firearm earlier that evening. Blea and the other woman suggested that Gaughan put the gun back together while they were getting changed prior to taking the photos.
Blea’s public defenders referred to the posted pictures of her posing with firearms as “dark humor.” She admitted Tuesday to kidnapping Gaughan for the purpose of causing substantial bodily harm or death, and killing him without the intent to do so. She had been facing a murder charge before accepting the plea deal.
Blea is scheduled to be sentenced on July 29.
Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.
