In The Dark: Las Vegas Police keep death investigation details from family, public
Fifteen weeks after Shana Storey was reported missing, city code enforcement officers discovered her badly-decomposed body under the floor of a home on Romero Street. The discovery wasn’t a complete shock, however, especially not to Storey’s family who’d been told by several people that her body was in the house, under the floor. What was most shocking, according to Katrina Stansbury, one of Storey’s sisters, is that news of the discovery came from an acquaintance on Facebook, not from anyone at the Las Vegas Police Department.
“I didn’t get a phone call. I got a video from someone on Facebook,” Stansbury told the Optic by phone. “That’s how I found out she was found. Not one phone call from the police.”
Stansbury said that she and other family members had been in regular contact with investigators at LVPD since Storey was first reported missing. Stansbury, who currently lives in Illinois, even traveled to Las Vegas in February to join a group of people who searched the city for Storey after she was reported missing in January.
During that search, Stansbury heard from several people who said Storey’s body was in the house on Romero Street, and Stansbury even met with LVPD investigators who took her to the home. She said investigators then attempted to convince her that Storey’s body couldn’t possibly be under the floor of the house.
In fact, crime scene photos taken the day Storey’s body was located show a flat-head shovel propped against a wall inside the home, one of the few items in the otherwise empty house. Incident reports written by an enforcement service specialist who discovered Storey’s body also referenced the shovel. The ESS officer wrote, “We noticed evidence of a hole that was being dug as there were makings from a shovel.”
