Police made a gruesome and horrifying discovery when a woman living in a downstairs apartment reported that there were maggots falling from her ceiling in the Bronx in New York City, New York.
The woman called the building superintendent on Saturday about the maggots. She also told him that she had heard two gunshots and a loud thud from the apartment above her on Nov. 6 at about 6:50 p.m.
Ernesto Garcia, the superintendent, called the police and they came to the upstairs apartment to perform a wellness check.
Police said that before they could even enter the apartment that they were hit with an overwhelmingly foul odor. They found a woman’s decomposing body on a sofa and nearby another body of a man with a gun near to hand.
Police identified the woman as 29-year-old Ashley Ducille, a mother of four children. They informed her family about her death and told them they believed the man they found was her abusive boyfriend, who was reportedly 40 years old.
Ducille’s stepbrother rejected that designation for the man.
“That guy was a pimp,” said Joseph Donald to the New York Daily News. “I don’t even know the guy.”
Garcia, who was distraught by the incident, told the Daily News that Ducille had a troubling and abusive relationship with the man. He said that she had lived with her four children for about three years until family members took the children away.
Donald, her stepbrother, said that he had led that effort because the children were living in terrible conditions.
“I organized a couple people, we went up and broke down the door and took the kids,” he said to the Daily News. “The place was a hellhole and we just took the children … There was no food in the fridge, no food in the cupboards, nothing. Everywhere it was empty.”
Garcia said that the woman had turned to sex work, and that her boyfriend had regularly abused her. He said the last time he saw her that she had physical signs of abuse.
“She was all bruised up,” said Garcia. “She was beat up. She told me he broke a bone in her back. Her hands were swollen. The police used to come here constantly. Every Saturday, they used to be here.”
The city medical examiner will conduct the autopsies of the two bodies.
Here’s a local news video about the harrowing incident:
NYPD investigating decomposed bodies found in Bronx apartment
www.youtube.com