Such a sad story. 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. Precious, a native of Isu, in Isu
Local Government Area 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 Local Government Area in Rivers
State. The heinous murder took place in a hotel in the Rukpokwu area of
Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.
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 Precious,
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 woman
as she was, Precious believed him hook, line and sinker.
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 the planned
visit to the Garden City. On Saturday, December 5, 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 7 am 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.
His words: “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 HOTEL MANAGEMENT
According to the account of the management of the hotel, the suspect
came to book a room on the fateful day at 7am. After paying, he locked
it up and went away with the key. About 10am, he came back in the
company of Precious.
“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 University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH)
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 DEVASTATED BY THE MURDER OF PRECIOUS
Expectedly, the murder of the young 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 whether his daughter 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 Inspector General of Police, Mr. Solomon Arase,
women lawyers, human rights activists, to come to my aid. All I want is
justice,” the grief-stricken father moaned.