Clifton Jade Alexander Taylor, 25, was found dead in the Las Vegas apartment he shared with a roommate on May 31, 2017. A University of Nevada, Las Vegas student and president of the campus chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers, Taylor was discovered in the bathtub with multiple significant stab wounds; the Clark County coroner ruled the cause of death stab and incise wounds and classified it a homicide. Police believed he had been killed in another room and moved to the bathroom in an attempt to clean the scene.

Investigators quickly focused on his 25-year-old roommate, Zachary Drey, after authorities say Drey called a relative and confessed to killing Taylor. Drey fled the state and was later arrested on June 9, 2017, by California Highway Patrol troopers near Indio, California; he was being held as a fugitive and awaited extradition to Las Vegas to face murder and robbery with a deadly weapon charges. Friends reported that Drey had been acting unusually in the days before the killing.

Taylor had been a computer engineering student who had accepted a full-time position with Northrop Grumman after graduation and was remembered by peers and faculty as bright, hardworking, and soft-spoken.