This is the Las Vegas attorney’s wife who was shot to death with her husband during a custody deposition hearing by her former father-in-law.
Dennis Prince, 57, and Ashley Prince, 30, were shot to death during a deposition involving Ashley’s ex-husband, Dylan Houston, on Monday morning. Prince represented his wife in the case.
Dylan was represented by his cancer-stricken father, Joseph Houston II, 77, who opened fire during the proceedings before committing suicide.
Ashley seemed concerned for her safety before Monday’s deadly statement and asked a private investigator about private security, as reported by 8 News now.
“Dylan has a lot of guns in that house,” he texted. ‘[I don’t know] if dylan will be there but in case he is.
Dennis Prince, 57, and Ashley Prince, 30, were shot and killed during a deposition involving Ashley’s ex-husband.
Joseph Houston, who shot himself, is pictured with his daughter.
Gunfire erupted around 10 a.m. Monday at the Prince Law Group office in Summerlin.
Ashley canceled security after learning that Dylan would not be present at the deposition.
Just five days before the shooting, Dylan, also a lawyer, had emailed Dennis saying, “You have no idea what you’re in for, all your cards are on the table and I haven’t played a single one.” [laughing emoji].’
Dylan was apparently referencing a surveillance report that did not shed a positive light on Dennis, according to a source with knowledge of the custody battle.
Court records seen by 8 News Now show Dylan was accused of testing positive for cocaine and alcohol while he was with the children.
The report says Dylan was seen drinking excessively on March 29, having five drinks with three drinks in approximately four hours. Dylan then got behind the wheel of his vehicle and swerved onto the road.
Dylan was asked to submit to breathalyzer tests before seeing the children, according to court records.
On Monday, a judge had ordered that temporary custody of the two children be granted to Ashley’s sister instead of Dylan.
Prince was representing his wife in an ongoing custody case involving her ex-husband, Houston’s son Dylan.
‘[P]”Attacking the parties’ minor children to Plaintiff would be detrimental to the children, and granting custody to a non-parent is necessary to serve the best interests of the children, based on the recent acts of the parent.” of plaintiff and plaintiff,” the Clark County District Court judge wrote. Bill Henderson.
According to Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill, shots were fired around 10 a.m. inside the Prince Law Group office in Summerlin.
Robert Eglet, a Las Vegas trial attorney and close friend of Prince for several decades, revealed that Houston had confided in him that she was dying of cancer just days earlier in an interview with Fox News Digital.
‘Joe told me this shortly before the shooting, that he was dying of terminal cancer. He makes me wonder if he felt like he had nothing to lose. Eglet said.
“I really don’t know, I can’t make any sense of all this.”
Court documents filed hours later detail the moments leading up to the senseless violence.
Five minutes into the deposition, Houston ‘stood up, had a very glassy and nervous look in her eyes, pulled out a gun and shot Prince four times,’ the documents state.
When shots rang out, Houston seemed to realize that a pregnant lawyer was in the room and spared her life.
The woman, identified as Shannon Wilson, “immediately crouched down and hid under the conference room table.”
According to a close friend of Prince, Houston had confided in him that she was dying of terminal cancer just days before the shooting.
Before shooting himself, Prince appeared to spare the life of a pregnant lawyer who begged him not to hurt her baby.
Michele LoBello, another of Ashley Prince’s attorneys, alleged that Wilson had begged the gunman not to hurt her baby.
“She explained to me that Mr. Houston allowed her to leave the conference room and, after she quickly left and took shelter elsewhere in the office, she heard additional gunshots,” LoBello stated.
Dylan, a partner at Resnick & Louis in Las Vegas, filed for divorce from Ashley in October 2021 after four years of marriage.
According to social media posts, the couple were together for several years before getting married, and Ashley announced that she and Dylan were moving in together in 2014.
She was identified as Ashley Prince in court records last month.
A divorce decree issued in November 2021 gave the couple joint custody of their children, a son and daughter, ages 5 and 4; however, this remained in dispute.
Records show Dylan was arrested on a DUI charge in October 2020, but later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor reckless driving.
Following his no contest plea in February 2022, Dylan was ordered to complete community service and DUI classes.
Records also claim he would send abusive text messages to Ashley, who requested sole custody of the couple’s children the same morning of the shooting.
Within hours of her death, Ashley’s attorneys filed an emergency motion requesting that sole custody of the children be given to her sister. The motion was granted.
In that document, LoBello alleged that Dylan “knew or should have known his father’s intentions prior to the commission of these heinous acts.”
She cited an attempt to pick up her children “in the middle of the school day, even though details about (Ashley’s) dead or alive status have not been made public at this time.”
Dylan responded to the accusations.
‘The motivation for the tragedy of April 8, 2024 is unknown to anyone except Joseph W. Houston himself. “The defense’s suggestion that this was a ‘planned attack’ against the plaintiff is insulting and quite speculative,” he wrote.
Dennis Prince, 57, and his wife Ashley Prince, 30, were killed in a shooting at their law office Monday morning at the hands of another attorney, Joseph Houston II, 77.
He stated that his actions “were not indicative of a co-conspirator as the Defense would callously like the Court to believe, but rather of a concerned father who wishes to protect, comfort, love and support his children from any unnecessary discussion about this tragedy.” . .
According to a biography on the law firm’s website, Prince was the founding member and lead attorney on all major cases.
He was recognized as the 2016 Nevada Trial Lawyer of the Year by the Nevada Association for Justice and tried more than 100 cases to a jury verdict at the time of his death.
He and Ashley had also recently welcomed a baby boy.
The legal group issued a statement hours after the murders, thanking “everyone who reached out to us with heartfelt messages of concern and sympathy over the tragic violence that occurred this morning in our offices.”
The Houston family issued their own statement through a public relations firm on Tuesday.
‘Our family is in a state of deep shock and sadness over the events of yesterday. We ask for prayers and privacy as we try to navigate the next few days,” she said.
‘The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is still conducting its investigation and, as it continues, speculation about the details of the incident only serves to add trauma to our already grieving and overwhelmed families.
“We have full faith in Metro’s efforts and will leave them with all future comment as their investigation develops.”