Talia Sanchez, 26, participated in JROTC, band and wrestling in high school, and had aspirations of enrolling in a nursing program. Her whole body lit up when she smiled, her aunt said, and she absolutely adored her 7-month-old son, Levi.
Family photos courtesy of GoFundMe
By the time Fort Worth police broke down her apartment door on Feb. 11, Talia Sanchez had likely been dead for three days.
Her baby son, Levi, was missing. Detectives later learned the boy’s father, 27-year-old Elijah Jacobo, had taken the infant to a relative’s house in New Mexico and left him there, according to an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by the Star-Telegram.
Jacobo was arrested two days later in El Paso, and has since been extradited back to Fort Worth to face a murder charge in the death of his child’s mother.
Police were initially called to Sanchez’s Fort Worth apartment by her mother on Feb. 11 for a welfare check, her family said.
Her mother had last heard from her on Feb. 8, when Elijah called Talia’s mother to tell her that the couple had been in a “pretty nasty fight.” On that day, Sanchez and Jacobo were seen on surveillance footage arguing outside their apartment complex at around 7 p.m., according to the affidavit.
The couple went inside, and Jacobo was the only one to emerge the following morning, police said. Jacobo was next seen on surveillance video coming and going from the apartment, and loading bags into his truck, the affidavit states.
During the welfare check, an apartment maintenance worker noted that the lock on the back door of Sanchez’s apartment had been changed, and the deadbolt on the front door was also locked. The deadbolt could only have been locked by someone with a key, police said.
A coworker of Sanchez’s told police that a security officer brought the victim’s cellphone to their workplace after finding it in a nearby parking garage, according to the affidavit. Surveillance footage from Feb. 9 shows Jacobo’s truck parking near where the phone was found in the garage, police said.
The security officer told the coworker that he called the last number dialed on the phone, and a man picked up. The man told the security officer that the phone belonged to his fiancee, and asked him to drop it off at her work.
After investigators found Sanchez’s body in the apartment, they interviewed an upstairs neighbor, who told police that she heard a disturbance coming from the unit on Feb. 8 at around 10 p.m., according to the affidavit. The neighbor said she heard slamming sounds “as if bodies were hitting walls,” which caused her ceiling lights to rattle.
Jacobo had been arrested twice before on domestic violence charges, one of which was a previous offense against Sanchez, according to the affidavit.
“Both assaults involved Elijah using physical force and documented his willingness to use violence toward women,” police wrote in the affidavit.
Jacobo is being held in the Tarrant County Jail on $750,000 bond, according to online records. Results of an autopsy are pending to determine Sanchez’s cause of death. Their son was safely returned to her family in Fort Worth.
This story was originally published February 28, 2026 at 3:51 PM.
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