By RIEL MAJOR

Tribune Staff Reporter 

rmajor@tribunemedia.net

THE neighbour of a man and woman found murdered in an apartment early Tuesday morning remembers hearing the two victims plead for their lives. 

Police were called to the apartment on Gladstone Road shortly after 4am when neighbours heard screams. Officers discovered the couple unresponsive with visible blunt force trauma to their bodies. Police have identified the victims as Gloria Estella Rolle, 58, of Nassau Village, and Tenneson Vaught Leslie, 39, of Gladstone Road. Leslie is originally from Jamaica, police said. 

The Tribune visited the apartment yesterday and spoke to a neighbour, who said she heard “shuffling and screaming” through the walls when she woke up to use the bathroom.

The neighbour, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “I was trying to make out whether it was either sex or fighting. After I heard the man say ‘don’t kill me with that, don’t kill me’ then I heard the woman’s voice saying, ‘don’t kill me.’

“I think they kill the man first and then they kill her. It happened so fast by time as I cut off the fan to try hear - it was just silent. I lay down and waited to see if anyone else heard.”  

Fearful, she said she and others who lived in the building went outside.

She added: “Five minutes later another neighbour came, and we went outside and (the other neighbour gave an account of what she heard.) My neighbour said ‘well I’m not going inside’ and everyone else said they weren’t going inside.”

The neighbour said when she walked back inside the apartment building, it was hot and she smelt the scent of blood.

“It didn’t smell right so everyone was like call the police. After the first call, it was no show for about 45 minutes. I call back and said ‘officer I called earlier, and I don’t know if these persons are dead or alive. I called about an incident and no one reach yet,’” she explained.

“Probably like 20 minutes later the police reach. The officer seemed to be scared to go inside but when he came out, he said, ‘yeah it’s two bodies.’” 

Paramedics were called to the scene and attempted to revive the couple but were unsuccessful. They were pronounced dead at the scene.  

The neighbour said she felt uneasy and paranoid after the incident, adding she plans to move.

“This happened unexpectedly and fast. I can’t think good, every time I wake up, I see images and I didn’t even go in the room, but I still could picture out how it happened. No one wants to sleep here, and no one is sleeping here. Yesterday you could have smell it, every time I come in this yard, I could feel it,” she told The Tribune.

“At work I cried, this year I lost like seven people and I feel this one more than any other one. I saw the pool of blood and that wasn’t no easy scene to see. I am leaving, I didn’t sleep here last night, and I didn’t have nowhere to go but I am moving.”

Although she didn’t know him well, the neighbour told The Tribune the male victim was friendly and caring.

“He had a heart that’s one thing I could say about him. If you ask for something and he have it, he’ll give you it. He wouldn’t say no, he isn’t that type of person to say no. He has a heart, he would come sit down and talk to you,” the neighbour said.

There have been 12 recorded murders so far this month, more than double the total number of murders police recorded in September 2018, which were five. 

The killings pushed the murder count to 75 for the year, according to this newspaper’s records, an increase of about nine percent compared to this same period last year. These figures have not been confirmed by police. 

The Tribune’s records show that around this time last year, the country’s murder count stood at 69.