An 18-year-old Arizona man opened fire on his pregnant 16-year-old girlfriend and two of her friends outside a Buckeye home Thursday evening, killing the girl and her unborn baby and leaving both friends in critical condition, police said. Michael Sanchez was already wearing a court-ordered ankle monitor at the time of the shooting.
The Buckeye Police Department said the attack happened around 8:15 p.m. outside a residence in the city west of Phoenix. Rylee Montgomery, 16, and her unborn child died at the scene. A 17-year-old girl, also pregnant, and a 22-year-old woman were rushed to a local hospital in critical condition.
Sanchez fled but was tracked roughly 18 miles to a home in Avondale, where officers arrested him and booked him on multiple charges, including two counts of first-degree murder, the New York Post reported. He is due back in court next week.
Montgomery's stepmother, identified as Amy, told AZ Family that Sanchez turned violent after Montgomery became pregnant in February. Amy said he demanded the girl "kill the baby." When she refused, the threats escalated.
Amy described the relationship's arc in a GoFundMe she wrote after the shooting:
"He started off very sweet and nice to her. Once he got her pregnant in February, it was all over. After telling her to 'kill the baby,' and when she refused, he turned his anger on her, threatening her numerous times. He even went so far to choke her at our house."
Montgomery broke up with Sanchez in March, Amy said. But the danger did not end. Amy alleged Sanchez pointed a gun at Montgomery and told her, "I'm going to get you." The frightened teenager reported the gun-pointing incident to police, yet authorities allegedly told her there was not enough evidence to file charges, Amy told AZ Family.
That response, or lack of one, now looms over the case. A 16-year-old girl reported that a man pointed a firearm at her, and she was sent home without the protection of a criminal charge. Weeks later she was dead. The specific agency that received the report, and the date it was filed, remain unclear.
Court records obtained by AZ Family show Sanchez was placed on felony probation in March, the same month Montgomery left him, in connection with a DUI. As part of that probation he was ordered to wear an electronic monitoring device. He was wearing it the night of the shooting.
The detail raises hard questions. An 18-year-old already under court supervision for a felony DUI allegedly committed a double homicide while monitored by the system. What conditions governed his probation? Were there no-contact provisions? Did any agency flag the earlier gun-pointing allegation alongside his existing criminal case? None of those answers have surfaced publicly.
Across Arizona, gun violence continues to claim lives in settings where the system's safeguards prove insufficient. In a separate Buckeye-area incident, a 24-year-old Goodyear woman was killed by a stray bullet in a desert shooting area, and investigators were unable to identify the shooter because so many people were firing nearby. Different circumstances, but the same grim pattern: preventable deaths and accountability gaps.
The fundraiser Amy created described the injuries to Montgomery's two friends. One was shot at least three times. The pregnant 17-year-old was struck in the back, and her baby boy was delivered prematurely at just 25 weeks.
Both women were listed in critical condition after being taken to a local hospital. Their current status has not been publicly updated. Their identities have not been released.
Amy's anguish was plain. She told AZ Family the loss felt like "somebody ripped my freaking heart out." On the GoFundMe page she wrote that Montgomery was "our sweet girl" who "fell victim to a controlling boy." The fundraiser also described the prior choking, the threats, and the shooting injuries to the surviving victims.
Cases like this one, where warning signs pile up and the system fails to intervene before a fatal act, have drawn national attention repeatedly. A recent fatal shooting in San Diego's Chicano Park ended with an arrest, but only after a life was already lost. The question is always the same: what could have been done sooner?
Sanchez faces two counts of first-degree murder, one for Montgomery, one for her unborn child. Arizona law recognizes an unborn child as a victim of homicide, a legal framework that conservative lawmakers in many states have championed precisely for cases like this one.
The full list of charges beyond the two murder counts has not been disclosed. Whether prosecutors will seek additional counts related to the two critically injured women, or whether the ankle-monitor violation will factor into bond proceedings, remains to be seen.
The case also raises questions about how the justice system handles threats against minors in domestic relationships. Montgomery was 16. She reported a direct threat involving a firearm. She was told there wasn't enough evidence. The man she accused was already a convicted felon on supervised release. That sequence of facts deserves scrutiny that goes well beyond one defendant's criminal trial.
Across the country, high-profile murder cases continue to expose gaps in the systems meant to protect the most vulnerable, whether the accused flees the country or simply walks past an ankle monitor to commit another act of violence.
The timeline is damning even in outline. In February, Montgomery became pregnant and the abuse allegedly began. In March, she left Sanchez. Also in March, a court placed him on felony probation with an ankle monitor for an unrelated DUI. At some point before Thursday, Montgomery reported a gun threat to police. Officers declined to charge him. On Thursday evening, he allegedly drove to a Buckeye home and killed her.
Every institution that touched this case, the court that set probation terms, the monitoring system that tracked Sanchez's location, the police agency that fielded Montgomery's complaint, had a piece of the picture. None of them assembled it in time.
When tragedies like this unfold, public figures sometimes rush to frame the conversation around policy abstractions. But the facts here are concrete and personal. A teenager asked for help. The help didn't come. The man she feared was already under the state's supervision. And now she and her baby are gone.
The broader cultural conversation about violence, accountability, and whether the legal system takes threats seriously enough will continue long after this case leaves the headlines. For Montgomery's family, the conversation came too late.
Amy's words on the GoFundMe page carry a weight that no policy brief can match:
"She was so scared of him, and we tried to get her help."
They tried. The system didn't. That failure now belongs to every official who had a chance to act and chose to wait.
Sanchez is due in court next week. Whatever sentence he ultimately faces, it will not answer the question his case forces into the open: why a 16-year-old girl who did everything right, who reported the threat, who left the relationship, who chose her baby's life, still ended up unprotected by the institutions that exist to keep people like her alive.
Public sympathy is easy to summon after a young woman's death makes the news. The harder work is building a system that treats a teenager's cry for help as something more than a paperwork dead end.
Rylee Montgomery asked for protection and got a shrug. The ankle monitor beeped, the probation file sat in a drawer, and a girl and her baby paid the price. If that doesn't demand accountability, nothing does.