Michelle Sanchez, 38, died on Sept. 17, 2022. Her body was discovered by police officers in an upstairs bedroom of a home on East Fifth Street in East Dayton.
According to police records, the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office ruled that her death was accidental and resulted from fentanyl and methamphetamine intoxication.
Charlene Manley, Sanchez’s mother, filed a lawsuit last month in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court that claims that her daughter’s body was left in the bedroom by individuals who caused her death.
The lawsuit says Sanchez died because of drugs that were provided by the people who hid her body.
The suit claims the police investigation into Sanchez’s death was incomplete and negligently handled. The legal complaint alleges police failed to secure the crime scene, did not interview key witnesses, failed to properly collect evidence and did not keep the people at the scene where her body was found.
Manley claims the city and the police department violated Ohio law and they should be forced to pay more than $25,000 in damages.
The city and police department are seeking to dismiss the case. Their attorneys said in court documents that Manley’s legal complaint fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.
The motion to dismiss also says the city and police department are immune from liability, with few exceptions that are not in play in this case.
According to police reports, the detective who investigated the overdose death learned that a couple of women were seen leaving the scene.
The detective said he identified the women and believed they fled because they had active arrest warrants. The detective said he eventually interviewed the women when they were arrested.
The detective said multiple people he interviewed believed Sanchez acquired drugs from the owner of the home. However, none of those people said they actually witnessed a transaction, police reports state.
The owner of the home was arrested in February 2023 after a search warrant was executed on her home, but she declined to be interviewed by the detective.
A couple of months later, Montgomery County prosecutors refused criminal charges in part because there were no witnesses who saw where Sanchez got the drugs, a police report states. Dayton municipal prosecutors refused charges the following month.
The property owner was charged in early 2023 with possessing narcotics on or around Sept. 13, 2022.
The Dayton Daily News reached out to Manley’s attorney and attorneys for the city but did not receive a response.
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