Dennis Prince Las Vegas attorney & wife Ashley gunned down by her former father in law, Joe Houston who had terminal cancer amid contentions that his lawyer son, Dylan Houston was grappling with drug and alcohol addiction and compromising his case for child custody.
The Las Vegas attorney, 77, who shot dead his son’s ex wife & her lawyer husband had terminal cancer. Further revelations in the case included one of the contesting lawyers in the child custody case that led up to the shooting had drug and drinking issues which risked compromising the man’s ability to claim legitimate custody rights.
In an update on the case, Dennis Prince, 57, the Las Vegas attorney and his newly married wife, Ashley Prince, 30, who were gunned down in the shooting at his fifth floor offices were gunned down by a fellow lawyer who had recently confided that he had terminal cancer.
‘It felt like he had nothing to lose’
Joseph ‘Joe Houston, 77, who also happened to be Ashley’s former father in law, was representing her former husband, Dylan Houston in an impending child custody case, with her new husband, Dennis, a top trial lawyer representing her.
Houston was the grandfather of the two children at the center of the child dispute between his son and his former wife, Ashley.
The gun violence happened Monday morning at the Prince law officers in Las Vegas, with 77-year-old Joseph Houston II, present for a deposition involving his his ex daughter in law and his son, Dylan. It was then that the 77 year old opened gunfire during the proceedings before fatally turning the gun on himself.
The revelation comes as Robert Eglet, a Las Vegas trial lawyer and close friend of Dennis Prince for several decades, revealing Houston had confided that he was dying of cancer just days earlier according to Fox News Digital.
‘Joe told me this not long before the shooting, that he was dying of terminal cancer. Makes me wonder if he felt like he had nothing to lose?’ Eglet told the outlet.
A dying father tries to right the wrongs of his drug and alcoholic laden lawyer son
‘I really don’t know though, I can’t make any sense of this all.’
According to Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill, gunshots broke out at around 10 a.m. inside the Prince Law Group’s Summerlin office.
‘You know, it’s just so tragic, I can’t even put it into words,’ Eglet said.
Court documents filed hours later detailed the moments preceding the gun violence.
Five minutes after the deposition began, Houston ‘stood up, had a very glazed and rattled look in his eyes, pulled out a handgun and shot Prince four times,’ the documents state.
As the shots rang out, Houston appeared to take notice of a pregnant lawyer who was in the room – and spare her life.
The woman, identified as Shannon Wilson, ‘immediately ducked and hid under the conference room table.’
Ex husband had drug and drinking issues
Michele LoBello, another one of Ashley Prince’s attorneys, alleged that Wilson had pleaded with Houston not to hurt her baby.
‘She explained to me that Mr. Houston allowed her to leave the conference room and following her quick departure and taking cover elsewhere in the office, she heard additional shots fired,’ LoBello stated.
Dylan Houston, 34, himself was not present at the deposition, but the documents note that a private investigator had recorded ‘concerning information regarding Plaintiff’s drinking and dangerous behavior’ a month earlier.
The investigator allegedly observed Dylan driving home from a bar on March 29 while swerving around the road.
Dylan, himself a lawyer and a partner at Resnick & Louis in Las Vegas, had filed for divorce from Ashley in October 2021 following four years of marriage.
A divorce decree issued in November 2021 granted the pair joint custody of their children, a son and daughter aged 5 and 4. At first, the couple split custody evenly. But in the spring of 2022, Ashley asked to modify that agreement.
Fallout and consequences and a newborn without their parents
Divorce filings allege Dylan grappled with substance abuse while he had custody of their children.
As part of the proceedings, Dylan Houston had been ordered to undergo regular drug and alcohol screenings and to remain at least 100 yards away from Ashley’s home, work, and parents’ home.
Another one of Ashley’s lawyers, John Jones, made reference to ‘a positive drug test for cocaine’ as well as ‘a positive alcohol test during his custodial time’ as well as ‘a missed alcohol test’.
Records show Dylan was arrested on a DUI charge in October 2020, but later pleaded it down to a misdemeanor reckless driving charge.
Following his no contest plea in February 2022, Dylan was ordered to complete community service and DUI classes.
The records also claim he would send abusive texts to Ashley, who filed for sole custody of the pair’s children the very morning of the shooting according to the dailymail.
Within hours of her death, Ashley’s lawyers filed an emergency motion requesting that sole custody of the children be given to her sister. The motion was granted KTNV reported.
In that document, LoBello alleged Dylan ‘knew or must have known of the intentions of his father prior to the commission of these heinous acts.’
She cited an attempt to pick up his children ‘in the middle of the school day, despite the details as to (Ashley’s) status of dead or alive not being made public at this time’.
Dylan condemned the accusations, with the lawyer responding:
‘The motivation of the tragedy of April 8, 2024, is unknown to anyone but Joseph W. Houston himself. The Defense’s suggestion that this was a “planned attack” with the Plaintiff is insulting and quite speculative.’
He asserted that his actions were ‘not indicative of a co-conspirator as the Defense callously would like the Court to believe, rather that of a concerned father wanting to protect, console, love and support his children from any unnecessary discussion regarding this tragedy’.
According to a biography on the law firm’s website, Prince was the founding member and lead trial counsel on all major cases.
He was recognized as the Nevada Trial Lawyer of the Year in 2016 by the Nevada Justice Association and tried more than 100 cases to jury verdict at the time of his death.
The slain attorney and newly wedded wife had also recently welcomed a child together.
