Man kills Odalys Bancroft and her 4-year-old son in murder-suicide: police

A Florida hospital director and her 4-year-old son were shot and killed Friday at a Chase Bank drive-thru by a man identified by Miami-Dade police as her ex-boyfriend.

Odalys Maria Bancroft, 43, was with her son Theodore Couto, 4, when Michael Andres Pineda Lozano, 41, pulled up next to their minivan and opened fire, according to a police news release shared with JS. Pineda Lozano then shot herself, the release said.

A sergeant who was already in the area immediately responded to the scene after hearing gunshots and found Bancroft and her son dead inside the minivan, the release said. Pineda Lozano was reportedly on the ground on the passenger side.

In an internal memo shared with JS, Jackson Health CEO Carlos Migoya said Bancroft was the health network’s director of regulatory affairs.

Migoya described Bancroft as a valued staff member “known for her unwavering dedication, kindness and exceptional talent.” According to the memo, Bancroft was hired in 2015 as an operating room nurse at Holtz Children’s Hospital in Miami.

“Odalys believed deeply in the work we do and never shied away from showing off her Jackson pride,” said Migoya. “Jackson is better because of Odalys and the indelible mark she has left on our organization.”

Bancroft’s brother Michael Trujillo told WTVJ that the way his sister and cousin had died was unimaginable.

“I can’t imagine any situation where a normal person would do this kind of thing to a woman and her child,” Trujillo said.

Bancroft’s sister described her nephew as ‘the best kid in the world’ in an interview local news station WSVN. She said Bancroft was a great mother.

“She was a great mother, she was a great nurse, she was a great sister, she was amazing,” she told the outlet. “They didn’t deserve to die this way.”

According to 2021 law enforcement data76% of female murder victims are murdered by someone they know and over a third are murdered by an intimate partner.