BUTCHERED BY LOVER:Sad Tale Of How 22-Year- old Graduate Was Murdered By Fiancé In Hotel Room

 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 left her father, Mr. Innocent Eze Onyenanu and
other relations in shock.

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 said.

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.