In the city of Las Vegas, a promising life was cut short on May 31, 2017. Clifton Jade Alexander Taylor, a 25-year-old African-American man, was found dead in the apartment he shared with a roommate. A student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Taylor was discovered in the bathtub with multiple significant stab wounds. The Clark County coroner's office determined the cause of death to be stab and incise wounds, ruling it a homicide.
Police suspected that he had been killed in another room and then moved to the bathroom in an attempt to clean the scene.
The investigation quickly focused on his roommate, 25-year-old Zachary Drey. Authorities were alerted to Drey's potential involvement after he allegedly called a relative and confessed to killing his roommate. Following the incident, Drey fled the state, prompting a manhunt. He was considered armed and dangerous by law enforcement. The search for Drey came to an end on June 9, 2017, when he was arrested by California Highway Patrol troopers at a gas station near Indio, California. He was subsequently held as a fugitive from justice and awaited extradition back to Las Vegas to face charges of murder and robbery with a deadly weapon. While a motive for the killing was not immediately clear, friends of both men reported that Drey had been exhibiting unusual behavior leading up to the murder.
Clifton Taylor was remembered as a bright and hardworking individual with a promising future. He was a computer engineering student at UNLV and served as the president of the university's chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers. His hard work had already secured him a full-time job with the aerospace and defense technology company Northrop Grumman, which he was set to begin after his graduation. Friends and faculty described him as one of the kindest and most soft-spoken people one could meet, an inspiration to many who was dedicated to his studies and his future. The UNLV community was shocked and heartbroken by the senseless loss of a student with so much potential.
