August 19, 2010 03:21PM
print email
http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5608847-146/nigerian_professor_kills_wife_self_in.csp

A 64-year-old Nigerian professor, Chukwudubem Okafor, of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, shot his Jamaican wife, Cheryl, before killing himself in what United States police described as a “suicide-murder”.

Joe Vanilla, a detective at the Berks County Coroner Office in Pennsylvania, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on telephone that investigation into the killing on Sunday had been concluded.

Mr. Okafor and 37-year-old Ms. Cheryl, who lived in Exeter Township in Berks County, Pennsylvania State, had four children.

“The investigation is closed and the manner of death of Mr. Okafor was ruled as a suicide and the death of his wife, a homicide; he shot her and then shot himself.

“The motive (for the killing) is that they had marital problems and this was domestic dispute,” Mr. Vanilla said.

He said Mr. Okafor, distraught that his wife had left him a few days earlier, arranged to meet her at a relative’s home on Pear Street in Reading, where he shot her several times before shooting himself once in the head on Sunday.

“A small-calibre handgun was found near the bodies,” the police said.