Michael Trujillo, brother of the Cuban woman murdered alongside her three-year-old son by an ex-boyfriend who later committed suicide, has been distressed by the double crime.
“There is no scenario where I could have thought that this could happen. I still can't understand it. It is very difficult. There is a lot of pain. It is still a great surprise that something so terrible has happened in our family," Trujillo said in statements to Telemundo 51.
The 43-year-old woman was in line last Friday in her vehicle to withdraw money from a Chase ATM in West Kendall, southwest of Miami-Dade, when her ex-partner parked next to her and fatally shot her and her son.
"This was a big surprise. They had their drama, but we never imagined that something so terrible could happen. I didn't believe that he had the capacity to do something so bad," stated the woman's brother, visibly moved.
Odalys' four-year-old son, Theodore Couto - known as "Teddy" - had just graduated from PreK4.
"Wherever he was, it was always a happier place with him around," Michael pointed out in relation to his nephew, son of Odalys with Vicente Couto, also of Cuban origin. Teddy's father was at the scene on Friday, desperate as the police tried to console him.
Michael Trujillo said that those who worked with his sister loved her very much, something he claims to have had plenty of evidence of after the tragedy.
"She had a very big heart and everyone only has good things to say about her," Trujillo concluded about Odalys, who worked as a nurse at Jackson Memorial Hospital, where she had risen to a leadership position.
During the tragic incident, a witness recorded the chilling moments, and in the audio of the video, a couple could be heard calling the police.
Detective Luis Sierra from the Miami Police confirmed that the murderer was in a van and stopped outside the bank, next to a minivan where the mother and son were waiting their turn in the ATM line.
The man went out and shot them several times with a long weapon, 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 south on Southwest 152nd Avenue when he heard gunshots. Upon arriving at the scene, he found the three bodies.
Odalys Bancroft, who on her Facebook account identified herself as "Odalys María", was the director of regulatory affairs at Jackson Health System, where she started working in 2015 as a clinical nurse. In recent times, she worked at Holtz Children's Hospital.
According to Carlos Migoya, the institution's CEO, she was a person who left a deep mark on the organization. The family recounted that Odalys Bancroft was married to Vicente Couto, also of Cuban origin, and later had a boyfriend from whom she sought to stay away, even with a restraining order.
Family members of the victims created two accounts on the fundraising platform GoFundMe to help with the funeral expenses of Odalys and little Theodore.
What do you think?
COMMENTFiled under: