Broke Lagos man kills family friend to raise money
By Babajide Adekunle
Ayomide Adeleye, 23, who resides in Lagos, has confessed to killing a family friend identified as Christiana Idowu because he was broke. Adeleye, after his arrest, told interrogators that Idowu had visited him to help her repair her phone.
“I killed her because I had financial problems,” Adeleye said.
“She came to our house around 5pm on the day of the incident and asked me to repair her phone
“I just grabbed her, applied pressure. She started struggling. She didn’t really shout because I already suppressed her. I then squeezed her throat, and she gave up.”
“By 4 am the following day, I woke up, I continued digging (a grave). Honestly, I did not close my eyes till daybreak,” he said.
The assailant, who is a student of the Olabisi Onabanjo University, said he contacted Idowu’s mother. The late Idowu was a student of the Yaba College of Technology (YCT), in Lagos.
He said to Idowu’s distraught mother: ‘Hello, madam. We have your daughter.” Adeleye said he succeeded in extorting N360,000 the late Idowu’s mother, who believed her daughter was alive.
“I gave her a sporty bet account to pay the money in order to avoid being traced,” he said. However, Adeleye was not so lucky to cover up his atrocious deed. Adeleye had added his National Identification Number (NIN) to the SportyBet account, which became his undoing eventually.
He said, “If I had not uploaded my NIN, it would just be an empty account”
“But the moment I uploaded my NIN, all my personal details, my location, my address, my name, everything, was already on the sporty bet. The girl’s phone was also with me, they could have traced the location of the phone, that was how they got my location,” he added.
“I regret that I killed her because my mum and her mum were friends.”
“I don’t deserve any mercy for what I have done. At the same time, I ask God to forgive me. What I did was totally wrong and I regret it.
“I feel remorseful for what I have done. If there’s any way I could be given a second chance, I want to be given one but I deserve death, honestly. I have been planning to kill myself. While I was in the guard room, I tried to look for any sharp object to cut myself so that I would bleed to death.”
