Agent Murdered in Dallas Model Home

Sarah Anne Walker, a real estate agent working in the DR Horton subdivision The Hemingway at Craigs Ranch, was brutally murdered with a knife Sunday. We forget that agents working can always be targets of opportunity as they tend to work alone and closely with clients. Working a model home is more dangerous as there is no opportunity to prescreen the customers or get personal information from them.

It would be a smart move for the larger builders to develop a panic system for the agents that could tie in to a central monitoring station for their agents. This could at least allow the agents to have a first layer of defense in case someone wished them harm.

Mr. Tate had picked up the couple’s son, Josh, from Ms. Walker’s Frisco home Saturday morning before she headed to work as a D.R. Horton sales representative at a model home in The Hemingway at Craig Ranch community of town homes in McKinney.
By 1:30 p.m., a couple visiting the show home in the 5700 block of Conch Train Road found Ms. Walker’s fully clothed body face down in the kitchen. McKinney police think she had been killed around noon.
Capt. Randy Roland said Ms. Walker was stabbed 27 times all over her upper body. Many of her wounds were defensive, meaning she put up a fight, Capt. Roland said.
“There was a pretty brutal crime scene in the bottom part of the model home,” he said. “There was a struggle throughout the downstairs.”
Capt. Roland said it was only the second slaying this year in the Collin County city of more than 100,000 people.
Sunday morning, crime scene tape and squad cars surrounded the home in a still-developing neighborhood that sits near a sprawling field and overlooks a sea of rooftops.
Capt. Roland said investigators were working to identify potential suspects. They had already spoken to people who toured the home Saturday morning and had gotten information from the few neighbors about what cars were parked near the model that day.
Investigators watched Ms. Walker’s autopsy. “They’re going to gather evidence as to what weapons were used, things like that,” Capt. Roland said.He said police had yet to determine whether Ms. Walker was targeted or her death was a crime of opportunity.
“We don’t have any clues to the motive,” Capt. Roland said.