A man killed a Cuban mother and her three-year-old son before committing suicide outside a Chase bank in Miami-Dade.
The incident occurred on Friday morning at a shopping plaza in Kendall West, located at the intersection of Bird Road and Southwest 152nd Avenue.
Detective Luis Sierra from the Miami Police confirmed that the perpetrator was in a pickup truck and stopped outside the bank next to a minivan where a mother and her son were waiting for their turn in the ATM queue. The man got out and shot them several times with a long gun, then got into his car, sat in the passenger seat, and committed suicide.
A sergeant from the Kendall district of the Miami-Dade Police Department (MDPD) was patrolling the area heading southbound on Southwest 152nd Avenue when he heard gunshots. Upon arriving at the scene, he found the three corpses.
The two victims were identified as Odalys Bancroft, a 43-year-old Cuban nurse, and Theodore Cuoto, who would have turned four next month.
The boy was the only son of his mom and Vicente Couto, also Cuban.
The family confirmed that she was divorced and recently had a relationship with a man from whom she was trying to separate, for whom she even requested a restraining order.
It is believed that her ex-boyfriend was the one who killed her, although this has not been officially confirmed. His identity has not been revealed to the media.
The cause of the crime has not been explained either.
Odalys Bancroft, who on her Facebook account appears as Odalys María, was the director of regulatory affairs at Jackson Health System, where she began working in 2015 as a clinical nurse. In recent times, she was working at Holtz Children's Hospital.
According to Carlos Migoya, CEO of the institution, they were someone who left a deep mark on the organization.
"Odalys deeply believed in the work we do and never shied away from showing her pride in Jackson. Jackson is better because of Odalys and the indelible mark she left on our organization," said in a statement.
Relatives created two accounts on the GoFundMe platform to help with the funeral expenses of Odalys and the little Theodore.
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