…sells her car for N1.7m
…moves in with another older lover
Juliana Francis
Operatives of the Intelligence Response Team of the Force Intelligence Bureau (FIB-IRT), Nigeria Police, have arrested 31-year-old olf Edeh Tochukwu Christian in Nkanu East Local Government Area of Enugu State for killing his older girlfriend, Miss Ijeoma Phyllis 49 and carting away with her car, mobile phones, and other valuables.
The head of IRT, a Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Tunji Disu, was said to have led the operation that witnessed the arrest of the suspect.
Indeed, the suspect was arrested in Port Harcourt Rivers State on the 2nd of November, 2022, after he fled from the crime scene at Lugbe in Abuja, to squat with a single mother who happened to be his newfound lover.
Christian was arrested after credible and reliable information about his movement was received by the officers after a complaint was received at their office.
Christian, who said he studied Mass Communication and graduated from the Federal Polytechnic in Nasarawa State, added that he used to reside in Abuja before the sad incident.
According to him, he mistakenly killed his lover on the 23rd of October 2022, at the deceased apartment during a quarrel.
He confessed to having used a pestle to commit the dastardly act on that fateful day after the lady invited him to her house and started quarrels with him over his refusal to initiate marriage proposals with her and sundry issues.
According to him, he got into a relationship with the older lady after they met at an event during the Covid-19 lockdown around March 2020 and they started visiting each other.
The lady later started pressuring him to marry her. He said that the lady also gave him a High Lander jeep to facilitate the union.
He further said that he was unemployed when the relationship started and had to go back to school to read phonology before he later found a job at a private school as an administrator and teaching staff before the killing of the late lover.
On how the dastardly act was perfected, he confessed that on the fateful day after he visited her, she had asked him to eat and he refused, having resolved to be avoiding her due to her quarrels and character.
She then demanded that he should return the car gift and when he did not, she went for the pestle to attack him.
He claimed to have been asleep when she attempted to attack him with the pestle. But he suddenly woke up and saw her armed with the pestle.
He overpowered and wrested the pestle from her, and then used it to hit her.
Phyllis immediately fell, screaming for help, thereafter Christian fled the scene.
When Police asked Christian why he made away with the deceased’s Toyota Corolla, I-pone, mobile phones and other personal effects of the deceased before he was arrested, he replied that it was because he did not want her to know where he was, adding that he did not envisage her death due to the assault.
He added that he quickly sold the Toyota Corolla car for N1,700.000 two days after the incident before he was arrested by the Police team.
The elder sister of the deceased said that it was after the Caretaker of the compound the deceased rented house called and informed her of her disappearance that she went to the Lugbe Police Division with her husband to lodge a complaint on the crime.
She also said that it was herself, the Police, and some friends of the deceased that forced her door open and recovered her decomposing body wrapped with a rug.
