[dropcap]P[/dropcap]olicemen in Lagos have arrested a man and his wife following the death of their 19-year-old housemaid.
According to reports, Mr. and Mrs. Fortune Stephens were arrested by Operatives of State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department, SCIID, of the Lagos State Police Command for the death of Joy Okom Adole, at their home at number 18 Ogundola street, in the Bariga area of Lagos state.
The couple called the police to report that their housemaid had committed suicide at their home on April 20, 2020, following a misunderstanding. When the police arrived, Joy was found hanging from a rope in her room.
The couple was taken to the station for questioning and during the preliminary investigation, a different story emerged of how Joy may have met her untimely death. Her family believes that Mr. and Mrs. Stephens or only Mrs. Stephens beat Joy to death and staged her death to look like a suicide.
Mr. Philip Ejeh who is a cousin of the deceased told Linda Ikeji Blog what he believes happened to his late cousin. He said that she worked for the couple for just four months, starting from the 10th of January. She was being paid N15000 a month, but the money was paid directly to an agent who placed Joy.
Ejeh said trouble started when Joy asked the couple to pay her salary directly to her. The next thing is that he received a call from the village that on April 20th at about 4 pm, that Joy was somewhere at Bariga where she is working as a house help but that she is now dead.
Ejeh said he never knew she was in Lagos. So he made inquiries and they sent the agent’s number to him. He called the agent who narrated what happened. The agent said it was on Sunday evening April 19th that they called her that Joy was misbehaving and that he should come and take her away from her home.
Actually, when the girl started working on the 10th of January, they began by paying her N10, 000. Subsequently, the couple refused to pay her salary and she decided to stop working. Joy said she wanted them to open an account for her so they can be paying her salary to her directly and that if they are not ready to do that, she is no longer ready to work.
They started complaining that the girl wasn’t working as they expected her to work. On the 10th of April, they asked her to leave their house since she wasn’t ready to work with them anymore. She packed her things and went to the bus stop but couldn’t find a bus due to the lockdown. Consequently, she returned to the couple’s house and informed them that due to the lockdown, commercial buses were not operational.
The couple then called the agent who told them to allow Joy stay with them till there is free movement in Lagos. The couple allowed her to stay but on the 19th, they chased her out again and insisted the agent come and take her away. At that point they began beating her, and the agent said she told them she would come and pick her up the next day, April 20th, 2020.
By the next day, April 20th they called to inform the agent that Joy was dead. The agent asked “Who killed her? What killed her? The couple said she was supposed to wake up and that she did not wake up so they had to go and check her room only to find her hanging”. The agent said it was not possible and told them they had beaten Joy to death.
The couple sent the photo of her handing to the agent. In the picture Joy was hanging but her feet were touching the floor. Joy’s family members are insisting that their sister was killed by Mrs. Fortune. They questioned how somebody can commit suicide by hanging and still have her legs touching the floor.
Confirming the incident to LIB, the spokesperson of the state police command, Bala Elkana, said “Our operatives at Bariga received a complaint from a couple that their household committed suicide. That is the initial report that they got. The DPO led a team of Homicide detectives to the house and they saw the housegirl hanging on a rope but the way she stood on the rope raised an eyebrow because it looked like it was a stage-managed event.”
The detectives went further to check for marks of violence and they saw a lot, fresh wound. She was tortured so there is a likelihood that she died and they tried to cover up by putting her on a rope to show she committed suicide.
That informed the decision to launch an investigation into the case. The corpse was removed and taken to the hospital for autopsy. The couple was arrested and they are placed under investigation. The Homicide department has taken over the case under the Commissioner of Police’s directive.’
“The couple is in custody answering questions because that is not a case of suicide at this preliminary stage” he said.
Hattip to Guardian
