A Bucks County jury sentenced Alfonso Sanchez to death Wednesday, for the killings of a man and woman inside a Warminster Township apartment in October 2007.
It marked the second time Sanchez was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2007 murders of Lisa Diaz, 27, and Mendez Thomas, 22. After he was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 2008 for the killings, Sanchez appealed his decision, and the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office agreed to grant him a retrial in 2017.
In the retrial, which began last week before Common Pleas Judge Alan M. Rubenstein, Sanchez was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and related offenses. He was also found guilty of solicitation to commit murder in a plot to kill a woman who survived the 2007 rampage in the Bucks Landing apartments.
Sanchez will be formally sentenced to death for the murder of Diaz, and to life for the murder of Thomas, by Rubenstein at a later date. He will also be sentenced at that time for soliciting three others to have the living witness against him killed.
“I’m ecstatic that I could bring this to a close for the family after they waited patiently for 16 years,” District Attorney Matt Weintraub said following the jury’s decision. “It was a terrible ordeal for them to go through it again, but we feel vindicated that the jury rendered the verdict that they rendered.”
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