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18-year-old dies in St. Petersburg machete slaying
By RYAN MALDONADO, BRYAN GILMER and CURTIS KRUEGER
Roache, 34, is schizophrenic and needs daily medication, his stepmother said. He is paranoid that pills are an attempt to poison him, so he refuses to take his drugs, she said. More than once, courts have found that Roache is mentally incompetent to stand trial for crimes. He spent time in the Florida State Hospital for the severely mentally ill in Chattahoochee. His ex-girlfriend once tried to get a restraining order against him, but a judge denied her request. About 8:20 a.m. Monday, Roache showed up with a machete at the woman's tiny house in the Childs Park neighborhood. He broke in through a window and found Monique Pennywell, 29, in the bedroom with boyfriend Gregory Shannon, 18, police said. "Hey, listen, man -- I told you to stay away from my baby's mother," Pennywell heard Roache say. Then he repeatedly swung the long blade at Shannon as Pennywell ran into the bathroom with the phone and called 911. Across the street, Tessara Jackson's 10-year-old daughter opened her front door and cried to her mother, "That man has a head in his hand." "At first, I didn't want to believe it, but I saw it was a head," Jackson said Monday afternoon. When police arrived at 1635 39th St. S, Roache was standing next to an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. He had propped the head against the windshield and placed a mirror in front of it "so that if the head were still alive, it could see itself," St. Petersburg police spokesman George Kajtsa said. Pennywell emerged from the bathroom to find Shannon's body beside the bed. She said she is two months pregnant with his baby. Roache was being held without bail late Monday in the Pinellas County Jail. He is charged with first-degree murder. Troubling signsMany documents about Roache's mental health history are confidential or under court seal. But public records provide some window into his troubled life. In 1993, his wife of two years, Ellender Jackson of St. Petersburg, asked for a restraining order, saying that Roache had been "pulling hair, choking around the neck verbally threatening me to the point of making me suffer." She eventually filed for divorce and dropped her request for the restraining order.
By 1997, Roache and Ellender Jackson were separated, but Jackson let him stay at her house after he got evicted from his place. Soon, she was seeking another restraining order, saying he had exposed himself and had threatened to damage her home. She said in court filings that Roache "is not taking his medicine because in his mind it's poisoning him." She said he "talks to himself loudly all day long." In 2000, after Roache was released from the state mental hospital, he and Pennywell had a son together. Soon after, she, too, sought a restraining order. She said he had come to her house, grabbed their son, then 3 months old, and left on his bicycle. But a circuit judge found that "none of the allegations establish that the petitioner is in any immediate and present danger." In the fall of 2001, Roache wrote this in a handwritten lawsuit he filed against Boley Centers for Behavioral Health Care, a nonprofit mental health agency. "Defendant are constantly stocking my family spraying flammable poisonous, hazardous materials in the atmosphere, publicizingly slave trading frivilous matter about my privacy. Ruining the life of my kids won't tolerate, unwelcome request for sexual favours." Roache's mental state became an issue even in traffic court. In May 2000, he voluntarily surrendered his license after being found medically unable to drive a car safely. He pleaded not guilty to driving without a license later that year. Pinellas County Judge Thomas Freeman ordered a mental competency evaluation. Based on the results, Freeman found him incompetent and eventually dismissed the charge. That, Freeman said, was the only option state law gave him. "We have the people who have diagnosable mental illnesses and need medication, and we have people who have substance abuse problems and they're not rational," Freeman said Monday. But the law only allows a person to be forced into psychiatric care if they are clearly an immediate danger to themselves or others. "It's a common occurrence," Freeman said. "Hopefully one of these days the Legislature is going to give us better tools and not close down places like Arcadia," a state mental hospital being phased out. Chief assistant prosecutor Bruce Bartlett agreed. "It's not at all uncommon for these folks to go to a state facility and be medicated and be in a state when they are returned to competency," he said, adding that often the patients fail to take their medication and then show up in court only to be declared mentally incompetent again. "I've got a couple of murder cases where they're in and out, in and out." 'He's been sick'Patricia Roache, the suspect's stepmother, said her son's schizophrenia makes him hear imaginary voices. She said he told police he heard on the radio Monday morning that the man staying in Pennywell's house was sexually abusing her children.
Roache moved to St. Petersburg about 11 years ago from Montego Bay, Jamaica, leaving behind a wife and a child. Since then, Roache occasionally has stayed with his father and stepmother in St. Petersburg, the stepmother said. Once he threatened to kill his father, she said. In December 2001, Roache moved to Bay Mobile Home Park, 3049 6th St. S, where he rented the trailer. Always afoot and awake at late hours, neighbors said Roache terrified them. On Friday, the father dropped Roache at the Social Security office to pick up his disability check, which he uses to support himself and his daughter in Jamaica. Roache's mental health had limited him to low-paying jobs such as bagging groceries and washing dishes. Roache, his parents said, needs constant help. "This all could have been avoided if the law didn't say that he couldn't be helped if he didn't hurt himself or somebody first," Roache said. "Dennis would have been in the hospital already if the police didn't have their hands tied behind their backs. This 18-year-old man lost his life because of this law. It's a shame." -- Times staff writers Chris Tisch and Leanora Minai and Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this story.
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From the Times South Pinellas desks |
Roache was charged in 1995 with trespassing and resisting arrest, and accused in 1997 of violating his probation. That led to a mental examination and the state's decision in 1998 to send him to the forensic section of the Chattahoochee mental hospital.
