Gunman spared pregnant lawyer during fatal shooting, document says

LAS VEGAS — A court document filed hours after a Las Vegas attorney and his wife were fatally shot in a Summerlin law office describes the moments leading up to the killings.

Five minutes after a deposition began inside a conference room Monday morning, attorney Joe Houston “stood up, had a very glazed and rattled look in his eyes, pulled out a handgun and shot (Dennis) Prince four times,” according to the document.

Another lawyer in the room, identified as Shannon Wilson, “immediately ducked and hid under the conference room table,” attorney Michele Lobello wrote in the filing.

“She explained to me that she asked Mr. Houston please not to hurt her baby as she is pregnant,” Lobello continued. “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.”

Dennis Prince, a veteran trial lawyer, and his wife, Ashley, were killed.

Houston then turned the gun on himself, according to authorities and others familiar with the attack. He had been representing his son, Dylan Edward Houston, in a yearslong custody battle with his former wife, now known as Ashley Prince.

According to the court document filed Monday by Lobello, Dylan Houston was not present at the deposition. The document states that Katherine Houston was being deposed at the time but did not describe her relationship to the case.

Court records show that Dylan Houston, who also is a lawyer in Las Vegas, filed for divorce from Ashley in October 2021 after a four-year marriage.

A divorce decree issued a month later granted the pair joint physical and legal custody of two children. But custody of the children, now 5 and 4, remained in dispute.

Dennis Prince, along with attorneys from the firm Jones &Lobello, represented Ashley, who was identified as Ashley Prince in court records as recently as last month.

Police said the shooting occurred at about 10 a.m. Monday.

Within hours of the killings, lawyers for Ashley Prince filed an emergency motion for sole custody of the children.

In that document, Lobello wrote that Dylan Houston’s actions around the time of the shooting suggested that he “knew or must have known of the intentions of his father prior to the commission of these heinous acts.”

In a response, he denied the allegations.

“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,” Dylan Houston wrote.

Lobello wrote that Dylan Houston attempted to pick up his children from school after the shooting “in the middle of the school day, despite the details as to Defendant’s status of dead or alive not being made public at this time.” Ashley Prince was the defendant in the divorce case.