Woman found dead in Henrico hotel room, man charged with murder

A 30-year-old woman was found dead in a West End hotel room, and Henrico police moved quickly from a medical-emergency call to a second-degree murder charge against a 36-year-old man. Natalie Grace Grant was pronounced dead at the scene, and investigators say her body showed signs of trauma.

First responders were sent to the 9900 block of Independence Park Drive around 5:40 p.m. after a man called 911 and reported a medical emergency. When crews got to the room, they found Grant inside and determined she had died there. Police then opened a homicide investigation, treating the hotel room not as a medical scene but as the center of a violent death.

That investigation led to John Adam Long, 36, who was charged in connection with Grant’s death. The charge reported so far is second-degree murder. Henrico detectives said the arrest came after further investigation, but they have not said what evidence pushed the case over the line, whether a weapon was recovered, or whether surveillance video played a role.

The biggest gaps are the ones that usually matter most in a true-crime case. Police have not said whether Long and Grant knew each other, what happened inside the room before first responders arrived, or how investigators tied Long to the death. They also have not given a motive, leaving the final known hours inside that hotel room only partly reconstructed: a 911 call, a trauma scene, a death at the door, and then an arrest.

Henrico County Police does maintain public data pages for incident crime reports, calls for service and arrest reports, tools that may later help pin down the sequence around Independence Park Drive. For now, though, the case stands on a stark set of facts: Natalie Grace Grant found dead in a hotel room, signs of trauma visible to first responders, and John Adam Long charged after investigators came back with a murder case instead of a medical one.