Lisette Bamenga (Facebook)
Lisette Bamenga was found with her wrists slashed and a suicide note. (Seth Gottfried)
Trevor Noel Jr., 5, and 4-month-old Lillian Noel died today after a fatal gas leak in their apartment. (Facebook)
Two children were killed last night in an apparent murder-suicide attempt in the Bronx, law-enforcement sources said.
Manhattan rookie cop Trevor Noel came home from work and found his 4-month-old daughter, Lillian Noel, and 5-year-old son, Trevor Noel Jr., unconscious, surrounded by heavy gas in their apartment on Noble Avenue in Parkchester, law enforcement sources said.
The stove was on, and his wife, Lisette Bamenga, was also unconscious, with cuts to her wrists, sources added. She is in stable condition.
EMS rushed to the apartment and performed CPR, but the children were pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said.
Police sources said Bemenga also poisoned the children with juice spiked with liquid de-icer. It was not clear if the children died from the poison or the gas leak.
Rany Ricardo, 44, said he saw EMS workers trying to resuscitate the infant when he was coming home last night. “They were doing CPR, and that’s when the ambulance arrived,” he said.
“The baby was moving… [its] legs a little bit. It’s sad when you see a baby like that.”
Sources said cops discovered a suicide note that said, “me and the kids are in a better place now.”
Plastic was placed around the windows. Bamenga was taken to Jacobi Hospital, where she is in stable condition.
Neighbors said the family moved to the building in the spring. Gwen Richardson, 71, who lives on the same floor, said she began smelling gas last evening around 8 p.m., but thought it was somebody cooking on a grill.
Around 11 p.m., she said, a firefighter began banging on her door.
“When I opened the door, I said, ‘Oh my God.’ The smell of gas was choking,” she said, and saw a woman in the hallway surrounded by firefighters. “I could hear them going, ‘miss, miss, can you hear me?’” She also saw the boy in the hallway.
EMS told Richardson to go back to her apartment, and open all the windows. “Could you imagine if someone had lit a match?” she said.
No one has been charged yet, cops said.
In May, an elderly man was found dead in his apartment in the same building with burn wounds, and cops quizzed his much-younger live-in boyfriend before releasing him, police said at the time.