{"id":200675,"date":"2026-03-12T00:55:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T00:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/200675\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T00:55:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T00:55:10","slug":"texas-man-executed-for-fatally-stabbing-girlfriend-and-her-8-year-old-son-in-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/200675\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas man executed for fatally stabbing girlfriend and her 8-year-old son in 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) \u2014 A Texas man was\u00a0executed<\/a>\u00a0Wednesday evening for fatally stabbing his girlfriend and her 8-year-old son nearly 13 years ago.<\/p>\n

Cedric Ricks<\/a>, 51, was pronounced dead at 6:55 p.m. CDT following a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.<\/p>\n

\"ThisThis undated photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows Texas death row inmate Cedric Ricks.(Texas Department of Criminal Justice via AP)<\/p>\n

He was sentenced to death for the May 2013 killings of 30-yea-rold Roxann Sanchez and her son Anthony Figueroa at their apartment in the greater Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Bedford. Sanchez\u2019s 12-year-old son, Marcus Figueroa, was also stabbed but survived.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said Ricks and Sanchez had been arguing in their apartment when the woman\u2019s two sons from a previous marriage tried to break up the fight. Ricks grabbed a knife from the kitchen and began to stab Sanchez multiple times, court records showed.<\/p>\n

Marcus Figueroa ran to his bedroom closet and tried to call police. After killing Anthony Figueroa, Ricks began stabbing Marcus Figueroa, who played dead until his attacker left the apartment, according to authorities. Ricks did not harm his own then-9-month-old son Isaiah, according to court records. Ricks fled and was later arrested in Oklahoma.<\/p>\n

During his capital murder trial, Ricks testified that he had anger issues and had been defending himself against the two boys after they had come to their mother\u2019s defense.<\/p>\n

\u201cExplaining my rage, I was upset. Things happen. I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t know. I wish I could bring them back, like, right now,\u201d said Ricks, who also apologized for the killings.<\/p>\n

A day before the stabbings, Ricks had appeared in court after having been charged with assaulting Sanchez during a previous incident.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Ricks\u2019 final appeal without comment. His attorneys had argued that prosecutors violated Ricks\u2019 constitutional rights by eliminating potential jurors on the basis of race during jury selection.<\/p>\n

The Texas Attorney General\u2019s Office said court records show the prosecution\u2019s jury selection decisions were \u201crace neutral\u201d and lower courts have already concluded that prosecutors\u2019 actions were not discriminatory.<\/p>\n

Ricks \u201cviciously stabbed his girlfriend Roxann and her eight-year-old son Anthony to death,\u201d the attorney general\u2019s office said, adding the public had a \u201cstrong interest\u201d in seeing the death sentence carried out.<\/p>\n

And earlier this week, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Ricks\u2019 request to commute his death sentence or grant a 90-day reprieve.<\/p>\n

Ricks was the second person put to death this year in Texas and the sixth in the country. Texas has historically held more executions than any other state.<\/p>\n

Charles \u201cSonny\u201d Burton<\/a>, a 75-year-old inmate in Alabama, had been scheduled for execution Thursday. But Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Monday\u00a0commuted his death sentence<\/a>\u00a0to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Burton had been condemned for a fatal shooting during a 1991 robbery even though he didn\u2019t pull the trigger.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Lozano reported from Houston. Follow Juan A. Lozano:\u00a0https:\/\/x.com\/juanlozano70<\/a><\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) \u2014 A Texas man was\u00a0executed\u00a0Wednesday evening for fatally stabbing his girlfriend and her 8-year-old son…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[72781,78779,64076,79190,79191,79192,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-200675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-72781","tag-cedric-ricks","tag-fatal-stabbing","tag-man-executed","tag-stabbed-girlfriend","tag-stabbed-son","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}