Autopsy results have shown that the New Jersey-based Guyanese couple found dead in Brooklyn on Wednesday died of gunshot wounds to the head.
According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Evande Orna died of multiple gunshot wounds while Troy Edwards died of a single gunshot wound to the head.
It sourced the information to the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
New York and Richmond authorities said yesterday that no one had been charged in the deaths or Orna, 39, or Edwards, 40, both of Plainfield, N.J. The two had dated off and on since they were teenagers.
Meanwhile, the New Jersey Star-Ledger says that Edwards death has been ruled a homicide. It reported the NY Medical Examiner’s office as saying that the “male victim” was killed by a gunshot wound to the head, and his death has been ruled a homicide.
They couple was last seen on February 20, leaving Plainfield for Richmond in a rental car. Police have said the pair likely arrived at the Town & Country Apartments in South Richmond at some point. Investigators found troubling signs of possible foul play inside an apartment at the complex, including red stains, a stun gun and a roll of duct tape.
New York police found the bodies Wednesday evening in the trunk of the rental car parked in Brooklyn. Authorities are investigating where and when the victims were killed and under what circumstances. “From the beginning, when I heard they were missing, I had a feeling,” Orna’s mother Veronica Ramessar of East Orange told the Star-Ledger yesterday. “I’m hurt. I’m so confused.”
The report said that news of the couple’s deaths left relatives and friends scrambling for answers. Orna’s father, Aubrey Mann, who lives in Toronto, said rumours have been rife about how and why his daughter died.
“Whatever news I got from people who are whispering, is all speculation and innuendo, it’s nothing I know concretely,” said Mann, who said he last saw his daughter in 2007 but spoke to her on the phone frequently.
Orna, 39, and Edwards, 40, had been dating on and off for about 20 years, according to Mann, and the couple’s families have been close for decades. The fathers met in Guyana, where Mann and Edwards’ father played in bands. Mann left for the United States sometime in the 1970s. He told the Star-Ledger that Orna was “like a daughter” to Edwards’ family.
The couple left Plainfield on February 20, said Ramessar, who filed a missing persons report on Feb. 26. The next day, someone claiming to be Edwards’ “wife” reported him missing, Plainfield, New Jersey Police Captain Ruth Selzam said.
With few leads, Plainfield police forwarded what they knew to authorities in Richmond. On March 1, Richmond police searched an apartment where they believed the couple was staying, but what they discovered there gave cause for concern
.
A Richmond television station reported red-stained sheets, a stun gun, packaging materials, Duct tape, scales and plastic sandwich bags were discovered when police searched the apartment. Property records show Orna as a current or past occupant of at least three Virginia residences, including one in the South Richmond apartment complex police searched last week.
The Star-Ledger said that after the ominous discovery inside the apartment, Richmond police issued a nationwide alert for police to be on the lookout for Orna and Edwards’ rental car. Police in Fairfax County, Va., received a “hit” on the licence plate on Wednesday leading to the discovery in Brooklyn.
In the meantime, Mann just wants answers. “I’m a loving father who wants my daughter buried and who wants justice,” he told the Star-Ledger.
