How A Woman Brutally Stabbed To Death In Front Of Her 2-Years-Old Son In Ekiti
Her two-year-old son, named Samad, was said to have been the only other person in the room where his mother, Kehinde Olomola, was brutally stabbed by her assailant.
However, while newsmen spoke with his aunt, uncle and grandmother on the death of his mother, the boy was up in his boyish element, and was oblivious of the mournful gathering.
At his grandparents’ home in Ilamoye community in Igede-Ekiti, headquarters of Irepodun/Ifelodun Local Government Area of Ekiti State, Samad and his elder sister, Sadiat, were not knowledgeable enough to decipher what had just befallen them.
While the mournful elderly women around cautioned little Samad from running riot, the boy sustained his play but seemed to have recoiled only when Nigerian Tribune tried to hear if he understood what had happened.
Asked if he knew where his mother, whom he called by her name ‘Kehinde’, had gone to, the little boy flinched as he said “he has killed her!” in his tiny voice. This time, he became serious and solemn, while his answer drew another round of emotions from the mourning pack.
When Samad was asked the second time what happened to his mother, he repeated the “o ti pa” (he has killed her) in Yoruba with the same seriousness and long face with which he had answered the first question about her slain mother.
The ready contention was that already, the two-year-old has started a long journey into a world of trauma and bitter imaginations. To have been in the room where his mother was fatally stabbed in the neck by assailants, the previous night, is considered to be an experience a child doesn’t deserve.
The 25-year-old Kehinde Olomola had died from the injury she sustained when she was attacked in her home in the night of August 26th. Before she died at the Federal Teaching Hostpital (FETHI), Ido-Ekiti, on Monday, the day after, family members, friends, neighbours and doctors had tried to in vain to save her life.
Taiwo, her twin sister, claimed that when she called Kehinde on the telephone, at about 9pm on Sunday, “I heard a male voice in the background and I angrily ended the call after inquiring about the male voice.”
She said: “The male voice was strange to me, I got angry and I said ‘what is a man doing in your room at such late hour’. I didn’t wait for an answer as I ended the call. That was the last I heard from her until we learnt the following morning that she had been stabbed in the neck.”
Speaking on the death, their family friend, Daniel Oluwadare, said he received a phone call from the elder brother of the deceased, Tosin Olomola, that she had been injured and that he saw her in a pool of her blood. Oluwadare said when he arrived at her home, he saw the fatally stabbed Kehinde barely breathing and explained that neighbours had helped in getting her to the General Hospital, Iyin-Ekiti where she received first aid, before she was moved to FETHI.
Oluwadare said “she was butchered like a cow” and “I carried her and mounted a motorbike with a friend who helped with the ride to the General Hospital, Iyin-Ekiti.” He lamented that “at Iyin General Hospital, we were told no doctor was available. We begged to have the hospital’s ambulance to convey her to another hospital, and they said we could get the ambulance only after we have paid N20,000 as fee.”
However, he lauded the doctors at FETHI, saying “the doctors at FETHI did very well to bring her to, and although she could not be heard as she made efforts to respond when asked questions, she was able to say that she was attacked by one Odunayo. But we could not decipher the other name she was mentioning.”
Oluwadare said the doctors announced Kehinde’s death to them on Monday “after we thought that she had made it through.”
Her twin sister, who spoke on what she felt might have been the motive behind the attack, Taiwo Olomola, claimed that she knew the Odunayo that was said to have been mentioned by her late sister.
Taiwo said: “I know he often walks past the street where Kehinde lived. On that fateful Sunday, in the morning, Kehinde and I were washing at home at about 8:00 in the morning. Whike Kehinde washed plates, I washed buckets she used to fetch water.
“Before I took my leave, Odunayo passed by with his friend and said ‘Taiwo, I heard you want to get married. We will come and we will come with something. Kehinde responded, “if you must come, please, don’t come with Indian hemp and he said “we will come with something more than Indian hemp.”
She recalled that on that Sunday night, when she called her twin sister on the telephone, at about 9pm, “I heard a male voice in the background and I angrily ended the call after inquiring about the male voice.”
She said: “The male voice was strange to me. I got angry and I said ‘what is a man doing in your room at such late hour’. I didn’t wait for an answer as I ended the call. That was the last I heard from her until we learnt the following morning that she had been stabbed in the neck.”
She described her sister as “a lively person who plays with people and an easy-going person that wouldn’t be found in places of trouble.” Taiwo Olomola said a suspect had been arrested by the police, and insisted that “the police must help us get to the root of this painful murder; they must take appriopriate steps and ensure that whatever the laws prescribe for a murderer must be applied.”
The Public Relations Officer of the Ekiti State Police Command, Mr. Caleb Ikechukwu, said the incident was reported shortly after the act was committed “and the police swung into action.”
Ikechukwu said “police officers were deployed to the scene, where they saw a pool of blood and blood on her phone and an axe that was used to commit the crime. Although the lady was rushed to the hospital where she later died.”
DSP Ikechukwu added that “before the lady died, she made a dying declaration of who attempted to stab her. She mentioned some name sand the police took note of those names and effected an arrest.”
He said about three persons were arrested regarding the crime. The suspects are already facing charges in court.