FORT WORTH, TX — The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office announced that 51-year-old Cedrick Allen Ricks is scheduled to be executed on March 11, 2026, for the murders of his girlfriend and her 8-year-old son in Bedford more than a decade ago.
Ricks was sentenced to death in 2014 by a Tarrant County jury for killing Roxann Sanchez, 30, and her son Anthony Figueroa, 8, and for the attempted murder of Sanchez’s 12-year-old son, Marcus, who survived the brutal attack.
According to court testimony and police records, the killings took place on May 1, 2013, at Sanchez’s apartment on Park Place Avenue in Bedford. That evening, Sanchez and her three sons had just returned home from a trip to Walmart when Ricks, her live-in boyfriend, began shouting at her outside the apartment. The argument continued inside and quickly turned violent.
Ricks attacked Sanchez, throwing her to the ground and strangling her. When her sons tried to intervene, Ricks turned on them with a kitchen knife. Sanchez and Anthony were both stabbed repeatedly, suffering fatal wounds to the neck, chest, and face. Marcus was stabbed 25 times, but miraculously survived.
During the trial, Marcus gave emotional testimony, explaining how he managed to survive by pretending to be dead. He told jurors that he mimicked the gurgling noise his younger brother made as he died, causing Ricks to stop stabbing him. Marcus then lay motionless next to his mother and brother as Ricks calmly showered, treated his own wounds, changed clothes, and packed a bag before fleeing in Sanchez’s car.
After leaving the apartment, Ricks called relatives and told them he had killed Sanchez and the children. Bedford police traced the call to Garvin County, Oklahoma, where Ricks was arrested. While in custody there, he was attacked by other inmates after they learned about his crimes. He was later extradited back to Texas to stand trial.
During the punishment phase, prosecutors presented evidence of Ricks’ long history of violence. His ex-wife and two former girlfriends testified that he had physically and emotionally abused them, often threatening to kill them during fits of rage. His ex-wife recalled one incident in which Ricks threw her down and stabbed the ground around her head, narrowly missing her face. On another occasion, he choked her unconscious outside a police station during a custody exchange.
She also testified that after the birth of their child, Ricks told her in the hospital, “I hope it dies.”
The jury deliberated just over an hour before sentencing Ricks to death.
Ricks remains on Texas death row at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston. His execution will take place at the Huntsville Unit unless his sentence is stayed or commuted.
