Man Convicted Of Murder In Warminster Double Homicide

WARMINSTER, PA —A Philadelphia man has been convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of two Warminster residents after his retrial this past week, authorities said.

Alfonso Sanchez, 41, of Philadelphia, was convicted by a Bucks County jury on Monday of first-degree murder for the killing of a man and woman inside a Warminster Township apartment in 2007, the Bucks County District Attorney's Office said.

Sanchez now faces the death penalty phase, which is set to begin Tuesday.

Sanchez gunned down Lisa Diaz, 27, and Mendez Thomas, 22, on Oct. 16, 2007, inside the Bucks Landing apartments. During the rampage, Sanchez also attempted to kill a third victim, who used her body to shield her toddler son from the violence, authorities said..

The trial began last Monday in front of Common Pleas Judge Alan Rubenstein and included testimony from several witnesses, including the surviving victim.

After almost five days of evidence, testimony, and closing arguments, the jury began deliberating on Friday before returning a guilty verdict Monday afternoon on two counts of first-degree murder, and counts of burglary, aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person, and related offenses.

Additionally, the jury found Sanchez guilty of solicitation to commit murder in a plot to kill the surviving victim.

In his closing arguments Friday, District Attorney Matt Weintraub said the surviving victim has always maintained since the very beginning of the investigation that Sanchez was responsible for the attack that claimed the life of her sister and boyfriend.

“She told us who the murderer is: His name is Alfonso,” Weintraub said, playing the 911 call where she repeats the statement to a dispatcher.

On the night of Oct. 16, 2007, Sanchez and two other men —Steven Miranda and Alex Martinez —went to Thomas’s apartment under the ruse that they wanted to buy marijuana from him.

When the three men arrived, Lisa Diaz was inside watching her sister’s two young children. Thomas and his girlfriend were at a neighbor’s house at the time and arrived a few minutes later, authorities said.

After they had completed the marijuana transaction inside the apartment, Thomas and Sanchez got into a verbal altercation when one of them stepped on the other’s shoe. Thomas went into the apartment’s hallway, and Sanchez followed behind him. Sanchez then pulled a handgun from his waistband, pointed it at Thomas, and shot him in the head, authorities said.

Sanchez then turned the gun on Diaz, who was in the living room. He fired two shots at her, one of them striking her in the shoulder. After she fell to the floor, Sanchez shot her in the head.

Describing the apartment as a “killing zone,” Weintraub said, “he turned this tiny apartment into his own shooting gallery in his murderous rampage.”

Fearing she or her children would be next, the surviving victim had to make a choice no parent should ever have to make, Weintraub said, choosing which of her children to protect.

Grabbing her son, she balled up with him in her arms in a protective fetal position on the floor to shield him from danger. Sanchez fired a shot at her, striking her in the knee, and then fled the apartment.

The two other men had fled earlier.

After taking her children to a neighbor’s house, the surviving victim called 911, telling dispatchers her sister and boyfriend had been shot. She said her boyfriend wasn’t moving and her sister was dying, authorities said.

When asked to describe the shooter, she cried, “His name’s Alfonso.”

The 911 call was played during the trial and again during closing arguments.

Martinez and Miranda surrendered to authorities the next day.

Miranda was convicted on two counts of homicide and related offenses and was sentenced to two consecutive life terms while Martinez pleaded guilty to burglary and criminal conspiracy to commit burglary and was sentenced to four to 10 years in prison.

Sanchez was arrested nine days after the murders. He was at a home in Horsham Township hiding in the bathtub with hair dye, cash, and newspaper clippings about the shooting nearby.

Earlier in the trial, Chief Deputy District Attorney Matt Lannetti described the items as “trophies of the carnage he inflicted.”

While awaiting trial for the murders, Sanchez tried to finish what he started in 2007 and ordered the killing of the surviving witness. Detectives intercepted prison phone calls, which were played during the trial.

A Bucks County Detective testified that he listened to thousands of hours of prison calls, in which Sanchez used coded language to arrange the hit. In the calls, Sanchez ordered others to find the home or work address of the witness and have her “removed from the playing field,” authorities said.

In addition to these two cases, Sanchez last year pleaded guilty to running a drug ring that smuggled suboxone strips into Bucks County Correctional Facility and was sentenced to 10 to 40 years in prison.

This case was investigated by Detectives with the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office and the Warminster Township Police Department, with assistance from Horsham Township Police Department, Detectives with the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, and the U.S. Marshals Service.