Husband Murdered Wife, Killed Self - Cops Say

Medical examiner workers remove the bodies of two victims as police officers use a tarp to block the view of the public on Saturday, August 6, 2022.--Photo by David Greene

By Dan Gesslein & David Greene

Bronx Voice 

November 23, 2022 

BRONX - Police have deemed the death of a married couple who fell in front of a Pelham Parkway building a murder- suicide.  

Investigators said 28-year-old Ornela Shehi suffered blunt force trauma to the head. Both Shehi and her husband, 35-year-old Florind Belliu, were found dead behind their apartment building. 

Police now believe Belliu struck his wife in the head prior to her falling off the building. He then allegedly jumped to his own death in a murder-suicide.

The couple’s death shocked the residents of Pelham Parkway. At around 9 am on August 6, police found the bodies of a husband and wife in the rear of 2199 Cruger Avenue. 

At the time of the death’s one female resident of the building who was in her apartment at the time, recalled, "I heard a noise, it was terrible. I heard it when they jumped, I heard it. I thought something fell, something big fell. A scream like that, so bad that scream... I heard it in the house."

Residents of the building no little of the couple since they had only recently moved in prior to the deaths.

A woman conducting COVID-19 testing outside of the subway station at the southeast corner of White Plains Road and Pelham Parkway South, where the window where the two victims fell from can be seen from the street, offered, "I was hearing screaming for a long time, because I was standing right there by the train station."

From a block away, the witness said she heard a loud "thump," before adding, "Then I was standing here and saw all of the police and they said people just jumped out of the window and I was like, what?"