Las Vegas ? Authorities on Tuesday identified two men who were found dead at a housing tract under construction in a southwest neighborhood, including a Kansas City, Mo., rapper who had been considered a person of interest in last year’s shooting death of a San Francisco Bay Area rapper.

The bodies of Anthony Watkins, 23, of Kansas City, Mo., and Jermaine Akins, 22, hometown unknown, were found early Monday by a security guard who noticed a car parked with its lights on in the construction area.

One man was found inside the car. The other was lying on the ground just outside the car.

Watkins died of multiple gunshot wounds, according to the Clark County Coroner’s Office. A cause of death was pending for Akins.

Kansas City police told The Kansas City Star that Watkins, known as Fat Tone, was considered a person of interest in Andre Hicks’ death but was never called a suspect. Hicks, who performed as Mac Dre, was killed in November in a drive-by shooting on U.S. 71 as he was being driven back to his hotel. Hicks, 34, was in Kansas City for a series of concerts and appearances.

After he was killed, a number of his fans called for bloody retaliation on hip-hop Web sites.

Hicks was the second California rap artist fatally shot in Kansas City last year. Ramone C. Davis, 31, of San Diego, died March 22, 2004, when a man tried to rob him of marijuana, according to police.

Watkins was wounded a year before Hicks’ shooting when a gunman opened fire on a vehicle carrying him and other performers from an interview at a Kansas City radio station.

Watkins and another man were charged with first-degree murder in November 2002 for the shooting deaths of a woman and her unborn child, but those charges were dropped the next spring after witnesses quit cooperating, authorities said.