Former NBA player faces murder charge

FILE–Chance Comanche #50 of the Portland Trail Blazers dunks during the fourth quarter against the Golden State Warriors at Moda Center on April 09, 2023 in Portland, Oregon. Steph Chambers/Getty Images/AFP

Chance Comanche, an NBA G League player with the Stockton Kings, will be charged with open murder in the death of a 23-year-old woman who went missing in Las Vegas, police said Sunday.

Comanche was released by the Sacramento Kings’ G League affiliate based in Stockton, California, on Friday after he was apprehended in California on a kidnapping charge.

Sakari Harnden, 19, was arrested on a kidnapping charge in Nevada and Las Vegas police said in a statement on Sunday that both she and Comanche will now be charged with murder after the remains of Marayna Rodgers, a medical assistant from Washington state who was last seen in the Las Vegas area, were found in a desert area near Henderson, Nevada.

Rodgers was reported missing on December 7.

“Early in the investigation, detectives suspected foul play and obtained evidence to arrest Harnden and her boyfriend Comanche for their role in the kidnapping and disappearance of Rodgers,” Las Vegas police said in a statement, adding that information received after the arrests had allowed them to find and identify Rodgers’s remains.

The 27-year-old Comanche played one game in the NBA as part of the Portland Trail Blazers during a 157-101 loss to the Golden State Warriors on April 9, 2023.

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