Blood seeping through the ceiling from the unit above was the first clue that something had gone terribly wrong in apartment No. 209 at Margate’s Blue Isle apartment homes.
When no one responded to knocks at the front door Sunday, firefighters removed it and police went in to find a husband and wife bloodied and dead from an apparent murder-suicide. Each had a gunshot wound to the head, police said.
Sally Mantzouranis, 66, was in her bed. Nicholas Mantzouranis, 84, was sprawled on the floor, a gun nearby, said Lt. Joseph Galaska, of the Margate Police Department.
“Detectives are still actively investigating this incident, but believe there is no danger to the public at this time,” Galaska said Monday.
Paramedics, police and firefighters were summoned to the apartment at 3400 Banks Road about 4:30 p.m. to perform a welfare check after the downstairs tenant told a maintenance worker about the red substance seeping through her ceiling.
The downstairs tenant wasn’t home when a South Florida Sun Sentinel reporter knocked Monday.
Another neighbor said that when shots were fired, a round went through his apartment. But he didn’t know that until police showed up Sunday. He had been out to hear music in Fort Lauderdale the night before.
The Sun Sentinel isn’t naming the neighbor, who was worried about the eerie nature of the case. It was his understanding that several neighbors had phoned police to report the sound of shots fired, he said.
He said the couple “kept to themselves” and didn’t appear to have visitors. Nicholas Mantzouranis seemed “frail,” he said, but often went to Winn-Dixie.
Nicholas Mantzouranis kept one of the market’s grocery carts parked at the base of his stairs, the neighbor said.
Dylan Eggleston, 26, said he had wondered what all the commotion had been about Sunday. Crime-scene investigators with cameras went back and forth from the Mantzouranis’ apartment to the one next door, he said.
Eggleston said he only had exchanged hellos and waves with Nicholas Mantzouranis a couple of times since
moving in a couple months ago.
“I cannot believe this,” Eggleston said.
Investigators urge anyone with information about the shooting to contact Margate Police Department at 954-972-7111