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Mother’s death leaves family overwhelmed while they search for answers

Reporter: Jolena Esperto
Published: Updated:
Nicole Gates. CREDIT: WINK News

A loving mother who was also a caring grandmother was stabbed to death in her Port Charlotte home.

Two weeks later, there remains no sign of Nicole Gates’ killer.

WINK News is hearing from Gates’s sisters as they start the new year broken.

Late in the night on the day after Christmas, CrimeStoppers says a woman was stabbed to death by her husband, who fled the scene. That was about two weeks ago at her home, and the suspect is still on the run.

Since that happened, WINK News has learned the victim was a mother, sister, and grandmother.

Nickie, as her loved ones called her, loved her family and had a special place in her heart for her three kids.

She leaves behind her father, four sisters, and three daughters who are 21, 5, and 6 years old.

After her husband, whom she married less than a year ago, stabbed her to death on Dec. 26.

“I believe that her girls were probably the last thought on her mind. She ran to her neighbor’s house after or during the attack. Somehow, she got out of it. And she ran next door. And I believe that that saved the girls. Because right after she ran, he ran out the back door. And I think that she knew that he would run after her, and that would get the girls away from the situation,” said Bianca Anastasia, Gates’s sister.

Gates’s sisters, Tabitha Hunt and Bianca Anastasia, said her 5-year-old daughter made the first 911 call, and her death comes one year after she lost her former husband and father of her children.

“They’re just 5 and 6 years old. They’ve got to live the rest of their life with no parents because of what he did. She was all those girls have. They have us, but it’s just not right. It’s evil,” said Anastasia.

CrimeStoppers says Fidel Fletcher has ties to Charlotte County but may have fled to Arcadia.

“She didn’t deserve this. Our family doesn’t deserve this. But most importantly, those girls did not deserve this,” said Anastasia. “They will live the rest of their life a day after Christmas remembering the brutal attack of their mother.”

CrimeStoppers is offering $3,000 for any information leading to Fletcher’s arrest, and the U.S. Marshalls Service is offering an additional $5,000.

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