Ricks spent his final Wednesday evening inside the Huntsville Unit prison strapped to a gurney, using what little time he had left to look across a glass partition and say sorry. The people on the other side had been waiting over a decade for something, though whether an apology was ever going to be enough is a question only they can answer. It was a moment that felt both intimate and impossible, grief and closure occupying the same suffocating room.
Cedric Ricks, 51, was executed for the 2013 killings of Roxann Sanchez, 30, and her 8-year-old son, Anthony Figueroa. The two were stabbed multiple times with a kitchen knife during a heated argument at Sanchez’s apartment in Bedford, a suburb in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Her older son, Marcus, who was just 12 at the time, was stabbed 25 times during the same attack and survived only by pretending to be dead until Ricks finally left the apartment.
Seven members of the victims’ family watched from behind the glass as Ricks addressed them. He expressed sorrow for taking Roxann and Anthony away and spoke about hoping the family could one day find forgiveness in their hearts, not for his sake, but so they would not have to carry the weight of that pain for the rest of their lives.
Final words directed at a survivor named Ricks once knew
The most striking moment came when Ricks turned his attention to Marcus directly. Now a grown adult, Marcus stood just steps from the execution gurney, his face unreadable and composed. The scars visible on the back of his neck, just above his shirt collar, told a story his expression refused to. They were a permanent reminder of a night that should never have happened.
Ricks expressed that he had thought about Marcus often over the years and was deeply sorry for everything taken from him, including his mother, his little brother and the childhood he deserved. The statement closed with a wish that the family leave in peace. At 6:55 p.m. CDT, Ricks was pronounced dead following a lethal injection of pentobarbital.
A crime rooted in a volatile and dangerous relationship
The 2013 attack unfolded during an argument between Ricks and Sanchez, who had previously been in a relationship. When her two sons attempted to intervene, a kitchen knife was grabbed and all three were attacked. Sanchez died from stab wounds to the neck, blunt force trauma to the head and asphyxia, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office.
His own infant son, Isaiah, who was present in the apartment that evening, was not harmed. After fleeing the scene in Sanchez’s car, Ricks contacted family members and confessed to the killings. Authorities tracked him through his cellphone and made an arrest in Garvin County, Oklahoma. He was later extradited to Texas, convicted of capital murder in 2014 and sentenced to death.
Legal challenges fall short before the execution of Ricks
In the final stretch leading up to the execution, every available legal avenue was exhausted. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied the request for clemency or a temporary reprieve. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the final appeal without comment.
His legal team had argued that prosecutors improperly removed potential jurors based on race during the original trial. The Texas Attorney General’s Office maintained that the jury selection process had been race-neutral and that lower courts had already reviewed and upheld those decisions.
At trial, Ricks raised a self-defense claim, arguing that the boys had provoked the confrontation by coming to their mother’s aid. Court records also showed that Ricks had appeared before a judge the very day before the killings on a prior assault charge connected to Sanchez.
His execution was the first carried out in Texas in 2026.
