A former tattoo parlour which was the scene of a shocking murder-suicide involving a husband and wife is set to reopen as a flower shop.

Mother-and-daughter venture Hetty’s Florist is preparing to open on the site of GothInk Studio in Canterbury, where Ramona Stoia was murdered by her former partner.

Molly and Mandy Davis say they are “extremely keen to make an uplifting and positive addition to the city following such a terrible incident”.

While this is the pair's first time going into business together, mum Mandy already runs Hetty’s Florist and Gifts in Aylesham.

The 50-year-old said: “The shop here had been vacant for quite a while and we drove past it and didn’t think too much of it, having followed the incidents and the tragedy that had happened here.

“We were always sitting in traffic looking at the shop and then one day we thought ‘18 months has passed and the shop is still empty’, so we thought maybe this is an opportunity in a different light.

“We discussed the shop’s history beforehand because it isn’t just us that we needed to consider, we needed to consider the public and the florists that would be working here. We want it to be a comfortable atmosphere.

“In the grand scheme of things, at the end of the day, the shop needed to be something. At some point someone needed to take it on and the owners clearly thought it was the right time because it was to be leased.

“We just want the shop to speak for itself; clearly what occurred here was a tragedy and our hearts go out to everybody involved in all of that.

“There will also always be a place with us to remember what took place, because it did happen, but we want to be known as Hetty’s - the pink shop.”

On the afternoon of April 11 last year dozens of armed police descended upon what was then GothInk Studio and discovered that Ramona Stoia had been killed by her husband Catalin Micu, who then took his own life.

The scene of the grisly crime has since been renovated and will reopen as a florist in the coming months.

Molly and Mandy are beginning their six-week long revamp of the shop with plans to paint the exterior pink and create a “really open, really bright and really colourful” space inside.

The retail space had been advertised by Sibley Pares for a rent of £18,000-a-year since last November.

Hetty’s Florist was founded in 2019 and is named after the family’s beloved pet Hetty the cavapoo.

Catalin Micu was facing allegations he had raped his wife multiple times throughout their marriage before the tragic incident, and was on police bail when he was found dead.

The 54-year-old husband had been interviewed by police before the murder-suicide, with Ramona accusing of him of a series of sexual assaults against her.

Kent Police referred itself to police watchdog the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) following its contact with the couple prior to their deaths.

The IOPC confirmed it had passed the case back to Kent Police to investigate internally, but would scrutinise the results of the probe.

Ramona, of Strangers Lane, Canterbury, died from wounds to her neck, an inquest earlier this year revealed.

Meanwhile, Micu was said to have killed his wife in an "unprovoked attack" before he was seen to go behind a curtain moments before his own death. He died from a stab wound to the stomach.

A full inquest has yet to be heard.

Hetty’s Florist plans to open by mid-November.