By Christopher Oji, Lagos
A 31-year-old man has told how he used a pestle to kill his lover, 49, to avoid her marriage proposal.
The suspect, Edeh Tochukwu Christian, a native of Nara Unateze, Nkanu East Local Government Area of Enugu State, claimed that his lover, Ijeoma Phyllis, was too old for marriage.
Christian, who was arrested by the Intelligence Response Team of the Force Intelligence Bureau (FIB-IRT) of the Nigeria Police Force for culpable homicide after allegedly killing his older lover, carted away her car, mobile phones, and other property.
DCP Olatunji Disu led IRT, traced and arrested the suspect in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, on Wednesday, November 2, 2022, after he fled from the crime scene at Lugbe in Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, to squat with a single mother who happened to be his new found lover.
According to a senior police officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as he was not supposed to speak with the press, said, the suspect, a graduate of Mass Communication of a Federal Polytechnic, claimed that though he did not intentionally kill her, the death occured during an argument over her marriage proposal.
The suspect during interrogation told the police that “the fight happened at the deceased residence at Lugbe area of Abuja, on October 23, 2022. I used a pestle to crush her head. On that fateful day, she invited me to her house and picked up quarrels with me over my refusal to initiate marriage proposals to her .
I got into a relationship with her but later found out that she was many years older than me. I met her at an event during the COVID-19 lockdown around March 2020, and we started visiting each other. She started pressurising me to marry her and gifted me with a High Lander SUV to facilitate the union. She even sponsored me to go back to school where I read phonology before I could find a job at a private school as an administrator and teaching staff. On the fateful date, she offered me food, and I refused to eat because I have decided to be avoiding her, as I didn’t want to marry her.
“Noticing that I was no longer interested in her, she asked me to return her gifts, including the SUV, so when I refused to hand over the car keys to her, she picked up a pestle and wanted to hit me with it, but I snatched it from her and used it to hit her.”
The senior police officer said after killing hers, the suspect made away with the deceased’s Toyota Corolla, iPhone, mobile phones, and other personal effects. He sold the Toyota Corolla for N1,700,000. The deceased elder sister came to report to us in company with her police friends and other friends forced the deceased’s house open and recovered her decomposing body wrapped with rug carpet.