A teen witness to the gruesome murder of a Bronx man who was later set on fire admitted her role in the grisly crime during her accomplice’s murder trial Monday.
Monique Davis was 15 when she tried to force bleach down the throat of Glenn Monroe, shortly before his accused killer Derrick Brank forced the victim’s head under water in the bathtub of a Mott Haven apartment in 2010.
“They tried to feed him bleach, but he wouldn’t take it,” Davis said during Brank’s trial on charges of kidnapping, arson and murder in Bronx Supreme Court. “So I did it — but he spit it out.”
Detectives found the charred remains of Monroe hogtied, gagged and face down in the apartment two days later. Prosecutors say Brank tortured the man, known as “Mathematics,” for three days before drowning him and torching his body.
Now 19, Davis agreed to testify against Brank in exchange for a reduced sentence in her role in the slaying. She pled guilty to first degree manslaughter as a juvenile and is serving two to six years in prison. She had faced up to life in prison. Three of Brank’s codefendants have already pled guilty and will be sentenced next month.
Brank’s defense attorney Patrick Higgins noted Davis first told police that Brank forced her to make Monroe drink bleach when she was arrested a few months later.
“You lied to the police?” Higgins asked.
They tried to feed him bleach, but he wouldn’t take it
“Yes,” Davis replied.
But she said in court that she did it on her own accord — though she admitted she was “a little” scared about what would happen to her if she didn’t participate.
Davis said that after the bleach torture, Brank and her then-boyfriend Starkeem Creer — then 14 — carried Monroe to the bathtub. She watched from the hallway as Brank held Monroe’s head under water.
“I saw the deceased struggling, and then he stopped moving,” Davis testified.
Earlier in the day, Dr. Susan Ely, the deputy chief medical examiner for Bronx County, testified that Monroe’s injuries were consistent with being stabbed in the head with a screwdriver, burned with a clothing iron and swallowing bleach before expiring due to “homicidal asphyxia.”
The trial is set to continue this week.
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