Pregnant Woman Held Against Will Is Killed by Boyfriend as Police Arrive Before Man Shoots Himself
The calls alerting police to domestic disturbances at 1406 Country Club Road in Norfolk, Nebraska, came three times over the weekend.
The first call brought officers to Apartment 20 at 4:20 p.m. Saturday. Officers again responded to that address three hours later, at 7:28 p.m., for a requested welfare check on a 23-year-old woman, according to a police blotter log reviewed by the Norfolk Daily News.
The third call to that address, at 2:20 a.m. Sunday, came from a woman whose concern about her daughter, Oriana, was logged as “boyfriend broke door and she is locked in bathroom.”
At 10:10 a.m. Tuesday, as officers again showed up to investigate a disturbance at the apartment, they tried to enter and then heard two gunshots.
Inside, after forcing entry through a locked bedroom door, they found 23-year-old Oriana Arcos dead, alongside her dying boyfriend, 23-year-old Marquise Edwards, who’d shot her and then turned the .40 caliber handgun on himself, Norfolk Police Chief Don Miller said at a news conference.
Arcos was pregnant with the couple’s child, whose gender they’d recently learned, he said.
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“With respect to Oriana, her death was essentially instantaneous. There was no suffering involved. There’s nothing anybody on scene could have done to save her,” said Madison County Coroner Joe Smith. “With respect to Mr. Edwards, although his death was not instantaneous, his unconsciousness was essentially so.”
The police chief said officers were alerted to the disturbance on Tuesday by a member of Arcos’ family, who told a 911 dispatcher that Edwards was holding Arcos against her will.
When police arrived, Edwards refused to open the door and said Arcos was not there. Police made contact with a phone inside the apartment that remained open during the incident, although neither Arcos nor Edwards spoke to officers on the line.
“After continued attempts without additional contact inside the apartment, the officers obtained a key to the apartment and keyed in to check on the welfare of [Arcos],” said Miller. “Because of phone contact, an open phone line, we knew that she was in the apartment, and we were worried about her safety.”
Authorities determined the couple’s death were the result of a murder-suicide, he said.
“It’s a very unfortunate, tragic situation, and both families are suffering the loss of a family member,” Miller said.
