Former NBA G League star allegedly admits to strangling woman in Las Vegas

A former NBA G League player allegedly admitted to strangling a woman in Las Vegas in a murder plot that had him posing as a prostitute's customer, court documents revealed on Tuesday.

Chance Comanche, 27, appeared in a Sacramento County court and waived his extradition back to Nevada where he'll face murder and conspiracy to commit murder charges.

The 6-foot-10 suspect and his former girlfriend Sakari Harnden, 19, worked in tandem to choke Marayna Rodgers, 23, in the early morning hours of Dec. 6, hours after the Stockton Kings played the NBA G League Ignite in Henderson, according to a Las Vegas police affidavit supporting the arrest.

Comanche was taken into custody last week in Sacramento before being read his Miranda rights, speaking to Las Vegas police detectives and explaining the plot, the affidavit said.

Harnden and the victim were both sex workers, with the former having an ongoing beef with Rodgers over a Rolex watch, police said.

The plot called for Comanche to pose as a customer, who'd tie Rodgers' and Harden's hands behind their backs for sex, according to the police affidavit.

After Rodgers had been bound with a zip-tie in the back of a car, Comanche used an HDMI cord to choke the victim "for approximately 10 seconds with the cord but stated he stopped when he heard Marayna struggling to breathe," according to the court record.

"Chance used the cord to strangle Marayna," the affidavit said, while Sakari used both of her hands on the neck of Marayna to choke her. "Chance said once he stopped strangling Marayna he released the tension in the cord, but Sakari continued choking her," the affidavit said.

Once the victim was dead, the pair found a ditch off the side of the road where they put Rodgers, a medical assistant from suburban Seattle, and covered her body with rocks, police said.

Comanche returned to the The M Resort Casino, where the Kings were staying, at 6 a.m. before he and teammates left at 8:50 a.m., police said, citing hotel surveillance footage.

Those same cameras captured Harnden also leaving her hotel room at 10:24 a.m. "visibly upset" and crying, police said. She was arrested Dec. 13.

Comanche, who went to Beverly Hills High School in Southern California and the University of Arizona, was cut from the Kings shortly after his arrest.

The player allegedly told detectives he met his co-defendant 1 ½ years ago through a dating app. Their dating relationship only lasted a few months, but they remained in touch, police said.

The teen suspect had an ongoing beef with Rodgers because she had allegedly been telling common friends “she was going to ‘smoke her’ if Harnden did not give her” a Rolex watch the victim coveted, police said.

Comanche had offered to help Harnden find a friend of his to kill Rodgers, police said. But they “were unable to get someone to help with the murder,” so the pair “decided to carry out the murder themselves,” police said.

“We really have nothing to say,” Comanche's defense attorney Michael Goldstein told reporters outside court in Sacramento on Tuesday. “We’re going to let the courts deal it. We’re going to deal with it in Nevada.”

CORRECTION: (Dec. 20, 2023, 2:07 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misspelled the name of the victim. Her name was Marayna Rodgers.