He was supposed to be someone she trusted. Instead, 18-year-old Michael Sanchez allegedly turned a quiet Thursday evening in Buckeye, Arizona into a bloodbath — shooting his 16-year-old pregnant girlfriend and two other women before taking off into the night like he could just disappear.
It all went down around 8:15 p.m. near Elwood Street and 257th Lane, in a Buckeye neighborhood that had no business seeing anything like this. Three females were found outside a residence on Elwood Street, all of them shot, all of them bleeding. One of them, 16-year-old Rylee Montgomery — Sanchez’s own girlfriend, who was pregnant with his child — was pronounced dead at the scene. The other two, a 17-year-old pregnant girl and a 22-year-old woman, were rushed to a hospital and remain in critical condition.
Witnesses said they saw two males running from the area right after the gunfire. Investigators hit the ground running — pulling surveillance footage, knocking on doors, and working leads through the night. It didn’t take long before one name kept coming up: Michael Sanchez. Police say the victims and the suspect all knew each other, and that Sanchez had been in a romantic relationship with Montgomery. This was not some random act of street violence. This was personal.
Sanchez apparently thought he could put some distance between himself and what he’d done. He didn’t stick around in Buckeye — he made his way to Avondale, where he laid low at a residence near MC-85 and Dysart Road. But Buckeye detectives weren’t about to let that slide. They brought in the U.S. Marshals Service and the Avondale Police Department, and by early Friday morning, SWAT teams were outside his door.
He came out without a fight. Maybe he knew it was over. Sanchez was taken into custody and booked into jail on multiple felony charges. The charges are plural, and they are serious, reflecting the full scope of what investigators believe he did to three women — two of them carrying babies — on that Thursday night.
Buckeye police have called him a dangerous individual and praised the speed with which partnering agencies helped bring him in. But the damage Sanchez allegedly left behind is the kind that doesn’t go away with an arrest. A 16-year-old girl is gone. Her unborn baby is gone. Two other women are fighting to survive. And a Buckeye neighborhood is trying to make sense of the kind of violence no community ever really prepares for.
The investigation is still open, and more details are expected to emerge as detectives continue to work the case. For now, Michael Sanchez sits in jail, and Rylee Montgomery’s family is left to grieve a loss that should never have happened.
