pleaded guilty last week to one count of murder in the second degree with a firearm. Malcolm had shot her husband, 52-year-old Rohan Malcolm, a former Jamaica Observer employee, at their Northwest 43rd Street home in Coral Springs on August 31, 2024.

“She did not trust him and was at her wits’ end with his lies and deceit,” the Coral Springs Police Department stated in an arrest report at the time. Court documents had revealed that one of the couple’s 14-year-old twin sons witnessed his father bleeding out on the floor of the parents’ bedroom after being shot multiple times.

Rohan was reportedly still alive when his son saw him clutching his shoulder. However, Denise later told detectives she fired one final shot, killing her husband, just as police arrived. Authorities received a call from the couple’s son around 6:30 pm, reporting that his father had been shot in the shoulder and was still alive.

When police arrived at the home and issued verbal commands for the occupants to exit, the 14-year-old twins came out, but the wife remained inside, according to reports. While continuing to issue commands, officers heard a sound resembling a gunshot from inside the house.

During a later interview with detectives, Denise Malcolm reportedly admitted the sound was the fatal shot she had fired at her husband. She told police she knew about his “unfaithful” behaviour for almost two years prior to the violence and that the Sunday afternoon shooting came in response to his claim that he was going out with “friends”.

Denise Malcolm went on to tell police she and her husband “slept in separate bedrooms and frequently engaged in heated altercations” due to his infidelity, which had all but broken up their marriage.

Her sentence, handed down last Wednesday, included 285 days credited for her time spent in pretrial detention. (Jamaica Observer)