Security Footage of Woman's Last Moments Raises Questions about Her Death
In the thick of a sweltering summer night, a woman named Melissa Rocuba was rushed to the hospital, still hanging onto life despite a bullet wound to her head. Her daughter Chelsea, who lived next door, was already at the hospital when the helicopter arrived. She was in a state of panic, unable to recall how she managed to get there.
Melissa's sister, Sabrina, who lived in another state, drove as fast as she could to the airport, praying for her sister's survival. Melissa's other sister, Joanne, and their father, a police sergeant, also raced to be by Melissa's bedside.
Was It an Accidental Shooting?
A man named Bruno was being treated at a different hospital for a wound to his hand. Detectives were trying to piece together how a bullet had gone through his palm and hit Melissa in the head.
Less than a day after the shooting, with Melissa on life support and Bruno's hand freshly bandaged, investigators asked Bruno to guide them through his house and describe what happened after they came back from a night out with friends.
Bruno demonstrated how his handgun had discharged accidentally, using a toy gun provided by the police. He explained that he had left the gun in the top drawer of his nightstand because of recent break-ins and his wife being home alone. Bruno stated that he was checking the gun's chamber to see if there was a round in it because their grandson was visiting the next day, and he wanted to safely store the gun.
While sitting on the blood-stained mattress, Bruno tried to show the investigators what happened. He demonstrated how he was sitting and pointing the gun to the left side of the bed with his right hand. He claimed that Melissa was sitting in bed, watching TV, when she leaned back, and he "must have pulled it away and then shot through my hand".
Investigators had previously examined the house and collected evidence but found no signs of a fight. The hospital staff found no other injuries on Melissa, and Bruno insisted they had been getting along fine. Bruno agreed to a polygraph exam the day after the shooting. The results were inconclusive, leaving many questions unresolved.
After spending several days in intensive care, Melissa's family made the heartbreaking decision to take her off life support. Her cause of death was listed as a gunshot wound to the head, but the manner of death was left pending, leaving the case open. As Melissa's family began to process her death, they started comparing notes about Bruno's version of what happened and his behavior before and after the shooting, leading them to suspect a case for murder.
"It's Like He Wanted Her Erased"
Melissa and Bruno's daughters believed they had an ideal family. However, as they grew older and became parents themselves, they started noticing problems in their parents' marriage. Sabrina recounted an incident where Bruno physically abused Melissa during an argument, which led Sabrina to move out of their house.
Two weeks before the shooting, Chelsea revealed that her mother shared a shocking secret about Bruno threatening her with a gun. Chelsea admitted that she had a bad feeling about her mother's shooting from the start but stayed silent for her father's sake.
Joanne also had doubts about her sister's death because just months before the shooting, Melissa told her she wanted to leave her marriage. Joanne described Bruno as very controlling and noted that after Melissa's death, Bruno spent very little time by his wife's side in the hospital.
Chelsea also found her father's behavior odd. Just hours after the shooting, she said her father asked her to bring him her mother's cell phone, which had not been collected by police. He wanted to erase a few text messages that he was worried investigators might misinterpret.
With their mother still in intensive care and with the police finished collecting evidence, the girls say their father asked them to get rid of the blood-stained mattress. Chelsea and Sabrina said that before their mother was even buried, their father asked for help purging all traces of her.
Bruno's Changing Story
As time passed, Bruno's daughter Chelsea continued to struggle with her father's actions on the night of the shooting. When she finally gathered the courage to ask her father for an explanation, she was shocked by his response. He stated, "I didn't mean to kill her. I just tried to scare her."
Chelsea spent months agonizing about what to do next, then told her father she was going to share their conversation with investigators. However, he dismissed her, stating that he would ruin her credibility, and nobody would believe her.
Chelsea was determined and went to the state police barracks to fill out a report, which included information about the incident her mother shared not long before her death: about the time Bruno threatened her with a gun when she refused to be intimate with him. This raised more questions about the circumstances surrounding Melissa's death.
