Man convicted of killing two in Warminster in 2007

Alfonso Sanchez was convicted by a Bucks County jury Monday, of first-degree murder, for the killing of a man and woman inside a Warminster Township apartment in 2007.

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

The trial began April 24, in front of Common Pleas Judge Alan Rubenstein; the jury began deliberating late Friday. On Monday afternoon, the jury returned a guilty verdict 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.

Sanchez, 41, of Philadelphia, now faces the penalty phase.

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.

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.

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.

Fearing she or her children would be next, the surviving victim shielded her son, and Sanchez fired a shot at her, striking her in the knee, before fleeing the apartment. The two other men had fled earlier. After taking her children to a neighbor’s house, the surviving victim called 911.

Martinez and Miranda surrendered to authorities the next day. Miranda was subsequently 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, Montgomery County, hiding in the bathtub with hair dye, cash, and newspaper clippings about the shooting nearby.

While awaiting trial for the murders, Sanchez tried to finish what he started in 2007 and ordered the killing of the surviving witness. 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 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.

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