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".

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 eventu­
ally 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 identi­
fied 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 interroga­
tion, 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.

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 un­
comfortable 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.

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.

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 Solomon Arase, women lawyers, human rights activists, to come to my aid. All I want is justice,” the grief-stricken father moaned.


www.sunnewsonline.com/new/butchered-by-lover/

Such a beauty!

I don't even know what to say