On a Friday afternoon in Las Vegas, just days before Christmas in 2017, the life of 43-year-old Natasha Henry, a Black female, was violently cut short. The house she shared with several roommates on Del Sol Drive was known in the neighborhood as a "problem house," a place where police had been summoned for disturbances and property crimes at least a dozen times that year.
The residence, described as a dilapidated "crash house," was the scene of an ongoing dispute that would ultimately escalate to tragedy.
On December 22, the simmering tensions between 47-year-old Christine Rose Sanchez and three of her roommates, including Natasha, boiled over. An argument erupted, fueled by what Sanchez perceived as a lack of respect from Natasha and the other two victims, Stanley Herring, 39, and Cordell Jones, 34. In the heat of the confrontation, Sanchez produced a handgun and opened fire, shooting her three roommates multiple times. When police responded to the chaotic scene around 1:30 p.m., they found Natasha deceased in one bedroom and the bodies of Herring and Jones in another.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Sanchez fled the residence. A witness, the homeowner, told police he heard the gunshots and then saw Sanchez holding a gun. She reportedly told him to take care of her dog because she was "going to jail for what she had done." Her freedom was short-lived. Later that night, about 15 miles from the crime scene, a police task force apprehended Sanchez without incident. She was arrested and booked into the Clark County Detention Center on three counts of murder with a deadly weapon. When questioned by detectives, Sanchez claimed she had been asleep and slept through the entire incident.
The investigation into the triple homicide quickly revealed that Christine Sanchez was no stranger to law enforcement. Just six months prior, in June 2017, a 2014 murder charge against her in the stabbing and shooting death of a woman named Bonnie Marie Rice had been dismissed. The Clark County District Attorney's office had dropped the case, citing a lack of evidence after blood tests failed to link Sanchez to that crime scene. She had also previously faced and had dismissed an attempted murder charge in a separate incident involving a boyfriend. Following the dismissal of the 2014 murder case, Sanchez wrote on social media, "Now I can start my life over and hopefully for the best." Her attorney in the triple homicide case suggested that Sanchez's use of prescription medication for a back injury might become a factor in her defense.
