I don't know the kind of heart some people carry that makes it easy for
them to kill heir fellow human being. This is just too sad! The gruesome
murder of 22-year-old Precious Naza Onyenanu, who graduated last year
from Imo State University with a degree in Education (Economics), has
given her traumatized father, Mr. Innocent Eze Onyenanu and other
relations the greatest shock of their lives.
He still shudders every time the thought flashes in his mind and his tears have also not ceased to flow.
What could have made this guy to kill his beautiful girlfriend? See details...
Precious, a native of Isu, in Isu LGA of Imo State was allegedly
butchered by Ephraim Isom, 27, a graduate of Rivers State University of
Science and Technology (RUST), who hails from Andoni LGA of Rivers
State. The heinous murder took place in a hotel in the Rukpokwu area of
Port Harcourt.
Precious met Ephraim in 2012, when he was posted to Imo State for the
national youth service and they fell in love. After his national youth
service year ended, Ephraim maintained his relationship with her, in the
hope of eventually going into marriage after the victim’s graduation.
But that, as it has turned out was just a ruse and dummy sold by Ephraim
to Precious, to string her along.
Innocently, and being a young lady as she was, Precious believed him.
Rather than formalizing the marriage, exchange rings and marriage vows,
what Precious got was unkindest and deadliest cut that ended her life,
from the young man she once called, “my darling.”
Homicide carefully planned and executed
The road that led to the tragic end of Precious began when her father
asked her to travel to Port Harcourt to escort her sister, Mrs Ezinne
Blessing Godswill, to Imo State, to spend the 2015 yuletide with the
family. Presumably seeing the trip to Port Harcourt as an opportunity to
see and spend some time with Ephraim, she excitedly called him and
intimated him about her planned visit.
On Saturday, December 5, 2015, she left for Port Harcourt, with
absolutely no premonition of the evil fate that Ephraim had carefully
scripted for her.
Unknown to her, Ephraim who had professed
undying love for her, was also secretly nursing an evil plan against
her, and looking for an opportunity to execute it. Pretending
that all was well, the suspect booked a room in a hotel (name withheld)
at Rukpokwu about 7am and left. He was said to have called Precious on
the phone, and told her of the hotel where she would stay and the bus
stop she should alight after arriving in Port Harcourt.
With grief laden in his heart, Precious’ father made a manly effort to
recount to Sunday Sun reporter how the daughter came to a horrific end:
“On Saturday, December 5, 2015, I sent my daughter to Port Harcourt, to
bring her sister from Port Harcourt, to Imo State. She left Owerri about
7am. About 12.30, I tried to call her on the phone, to know if she got
to Port Harcourt safely, but her phone was switched off. I tried all
through the night, but the call did not go through.”
The 67-year-old businessman disclosed that when the phone eventually
went through the following day, Sunday, December 6, 2015, it was a male
voice that responded.
“About 12:30, the following day, Sunday, December 6, 2015, the phone
rang and it was a male voice that spoke. Just before I could ask him
about the owner of the handset, he quickly switched off.”
At that point, Onyenanu said he became afraid and concluded that his
daughter had been kidnapped. He said he rushed to the Anti-Kidnapping
Unit of the Imo State Police Command, Owerri, to lodge a complaint. And
when he went back to the Command the following day, Monday, December 7,
2015, for necessary documentation, Precious was declared missing by the
police. The Imo State Police Command was said to have investigated the
case throughout the week, but all efforts to unravel the mystery
surrounding the sudden disappearance of the girl proved abortive.
But on Monday, December 14, while at the Imo Police Command, the
distraught father said he received a phone call from his brother-in-law
living in Port Harcourt, Ifeanyi Nmezi, who told him to rush to Port
Harcourt, adding that his daughter had been murdered. In his confused
state, Eze went to Port Harcourt and joined his daughter, Ezinne, at the
Homicide Section, where she had already written a statement in respect
of the murdered Precious.
Detectives in Rivers swing into action
In the course of the investigation, policemen attached to the State
Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Rivers State Police Command
approached one of the GSM service providers and obtained the call log
with a view to knowing the last person she communicated with before her
gruesome murder. With the information provided by the GSM network
company, the police identified the person who spoke to Precious last and
also sent a Short Message Service, SMS to her, describing the bus stop
where she should alight and the name of the hotel where they would
lodge. The policemen later traced the suspect, arrested and detained
him. After initial interrogation, the detectives took the detained
suspect the following day to his house where they conducted a search.
And in his house, two handsets belonging to the victim were found.
Father of the victim takes up the tale:
“When the police found the two handsets, I was invited to come for
identification. It was our housemaid, Chiamaka, who knows the handsets
used by my daughter that identified the phones.”
But in an effort to cover the alleged crime, Ephraim deleted all the
contacts in the handsets, which he also claimed belonged to him. To
further confirm the real owner of the handsets, the police took them to
the service provider, who restored the deleted contacts and call log.
“It was after the contacts were restored that the police saw the SMS
Ephraim sent to my daughter, telling her the bus stop to alight at
Rukpokwu,” Onyenanu further said.
Role of the Hotel
“After sometime, two of them went out and later came back, holding food
in take-away packs they bought from one of the eateries,” a source at
the hotel told Sunday Sun.
It was also gathered that after sometime, too, the suspect went out
again without Precious. But the director of the hotel felt uncomfortable
and suspicious of the movement of the man. He asked him if he was
checking out and also asked about the girl he took into the room he had
booked.
But Ephraim lied to him, claiming that Precious was sleeping, and added that he wanted to buy something and then come back soon.
“Not satisfied with his response, the director asked the manager to call
the suspect back. But he (Ephraim) was able to play a fast one on the
manager and disappeared. He never came back to the hotel again,” the
source further disclosed.
The hotel workers then went to knock on the door of the room but there
was no response. After banging on the door repeatedly without any
response, they peeped through a hole and saw the victim’s lifeless body
on the bed, wrapped with bed sheet and in a pool of blood. It was after
the discovery that the management of the hotel reported the matter to a
nearby police station. A team of policemen went to the hotel, forced the
door open and removed the body to the mortuary.
Promptly, the police arrested and detained the director, manager and
security men. When interrogated, they denied any involvement or
knowledge of the crime, but assured that they would identify the
customer, who booked the hotel and brought in the victim.
Family Devasted by the Murder of Precious
Expectedly, the murder of the graduate devastated her family, especially
her mother, Florence. According to Onyenanu, Precious, who was the last
but one child in the family lacked nothing as her elderly ones and
parents, provided for her needs.
He said: “I don’t know how her mother will survive this tragedy; they
were too close. Out of my 14 children, she was the 13th. I have two
wives. The older children pampered her a lot because of her good
character and beauty. My daughter was very beautiful and fashionable.
Anybody that came in contact with her liked her.”
Asked if she and her fiancé had any quarrel which could have led to the
dastardly act, the grieving father disclosed to the reporter how one of
his daughters told him that Precious had misunderstanding with Ephraim,
after someone called him (Ephraim) on the phone one day, and Precious
picked the call and the person turned out to be his girlfriend. The
incident was said to have angered Precious, who accused the suspect of
planning to jilt (dump) her.
“Also, who knows whether my daughter told him about her plans to travel
to UK this year for her master’s degree programme? I’m calling on the
Federal Government, the IG of Police, Mr. Solomon Arase, women lawyers,
human rights activists, to come to my aid. All I want is justice,” the
father said moaned.
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