Authorities have identified the remains of a woman found last week in north Oak Cliff as De’brenese Janey Henry.
The 31-year-old’s death had been ruled a homicide by the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office after her body was discovered near the Trinity River on Saturday night. She was found in the 800 block of Brazos Street near East Jefferson Boulevard at around 9:15 p.m. on July 17.
As previously covered in The Dallas Express, Dallas Police Department (DPD) issued a public alert the following day, given that Henry’s was the third body of a woman discovered in the desolate fields of Oak Cliff since April.
“Out of an abundance of caution, and in the interest of public safety, the department wants to inform this population of this trend,” DPD had written in the news release.
On July 19, police arrested 25-year-old Oscar Sanchez-Garcia in connection with the murders of 60-year-old Kimberly Robinson, 25-year-old Cherish Gibson, and the woman now known to be Henry, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Robinson was found stabbed to death on April 22 under a DART light-rail bridge near East Eighth Street on April 22. Approximately two months later, on June 24, officers located Gibson’s body in roughly the same vicinity, similarly showing signs of a stabbing.
Henry had been discovered only about a mile and a half from the previous crime scenes.
A GoFundMe page created by Trey McElroy, Henry’s younger brother, to help with funeral costs states that she was “a fun, loving, funny, hardworking sister and mom.”
Now, Sanchez-Garcia faces three murder charges and is being held at the Dallas County jail on a bond of $6 million. It remains unclear whether he has legal representation.
As previously covered in The Dallas Express, the arrest warrant affidavit revealed that Sanchez-Garcia’s cellphone records indicated that he was near both Gibson and Robinson when they were killed and that his truck had been spotted in surveillance footage taken from a business near where Gibson’s body was found.
It also disclosed that DNA evidence from sexual assault kits administered to the bodies of Gibson and Robinson suggested they had encountered the same person.
While both Gibson and Robinson were found in Council Member Carolyn King Arnold’s District 4, Henry’s body was recovered in Council Member Chad West’s District 1.
Dallas has seen a rise in criminal homicides recently, clocking a year-over-year increase of about 23% in the first four months of the year. More recent data has been declared “unreliable” by the City, allegedly due to tech issues following the ransomware attack in early May.
Nearby cities like Fort Worth have implemented dedicated crime units in certain areas. As a result, Fort Worth’s downtown area has reportedly been experiencing much lower crime rates compared to Downtown Dallas.
Yet DPD is facing a personnel shortage, with roughly 3,100 officers currently sworn in — far fewer than the estimated 4,000 needed to adequately police the city, per a City analysis.