Monique Tolbert of Alabama got “the worst phone call of my life” when she found out her sister had died in late-September. But what makes her sibling’s death eerie is that the sister had told her to plan her funeral— just two days before she was killed.
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It was Sept. 24 when a Birmingham resident had heard a gunshot while she was in bed on the 1100 block of Kiser Road just before midnight. Birmingham Police responded to a shots fired call and upon their arrival, they found LaVentrice Denise Tolbert, 40, dead inside a home.
But she wasn’t alone.
A man, identified as Tony DeWayne Davis, Tolbert’s boyfriend, was inside a bedroom suffering from a gunshot wound himself, according to local news station WBRC 6. Authorities said Davis shot Tolbert before shooting himself. He was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, but what had been unfolding before has left Tolbert’s family grieving.
A neighbor who heard the gunshots said Davis was holding a gun to his head, according to reports, because he refused to go back to jail. Davis, 35, died of his injuries two days later, officially marking the incident a domestic-related murder-suicide— something Tolbert told her sister Monique to plan for.
“She told me, ‘When I leave, you will be the one to plan my funeral,’” Monique told Al.com. “She was telling me how she wanted her funeral, she didn’t want to be cremated, she wanted a casket,” she said.
Monique, who said her sister’s seven-year relationship with Davis was “abusive from the jump,” recalled how she “told her that’s not something I wanted to talk about. I went inside, and she hugged me and told me she loved me.” Two days later, her sister died.
“My daughter screaming to the top of her lungs that her auntie was dead,” Monique said, per WIAT. “I was trying to figure out which auntie she was talking about, once she said ‘Denise’ my heart stopped.”
As Monique planned her sister’s funeral, which was Oct. 4, she said she doesn’t want anyone else to experience what she’s going through. “I want to tell anyone else in this situation to seek help, talk to somebody, let them know what’s going on,” Monique said.
“That’s my heart,” she added. “And this right here this was just something I wasn’t planning on doing.”
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