I knelt and begged him, yet he slaughtered my daughter in my presence .Mother of mtn worker murdered by suitor

The inch-long scar on the neck of 53-year-
old Mrs. Christiana Ashinwo, is one of the
physical reminders of the horror of Sunday,
April 24, 2016.
She sat on a chair quietly in the sitting
room of a house in Agbado area of Lagos,
which she built with the sweat and
suffering of many years as a single mother
and plank vendor. Her head was bowed
when our correspondent went to meet her.
But when Mrs Ashinwo looked up, her eyes
were glazed with a faraway look that would
easily giveaway the fact that she could
have witnessed trauma, great trauma that
she obviously had yet to recover from.
Who would blame her? Watching her
daughter killed before her presence, is
enough to give her chills every moment for
the rest of her life. The horrific incident
she witnessed and survived few months
ago in Kwara State remains so fresh on her
mind.
Our correspondent had reported on April 30
how Mrs. Ashinwo and her daughter, 30-
year-old Oluwatosin Ashinwo, an employee
of MTN in Ilorin, Kwara State were
attacked by a knife-wielding obsessed
suitor of the young lady, 45-year-old David
Ogundele.
Mrs. Ashinwo survived the attack, her
daughter didn’t.
The older woman’s injuries were no less
extensive, as she spent many days in the
emergency unit of a hospital in Ilorin as
doctors battled to save her life. She would
later spend another two months in the
intensive care unit of the hospital.
Our correspondent paid her a visit in
Lagos, days after she was discharged and
brought back home.
With a very raspy voice and intermittent
cough that came out with each word, one
would conclude that all was still not well
with the woman, who was left for dead in
the pool of her own blood in Ilorin that
fateful day.
For her, the agony she feels with each
morsel of food and gulp of liquid passing
through her knife-damaged throat was
nothing compared to the daily torment of
thinking about how she lost her first child,
breadwinner, and daughter.
“I knelt down to beg my daughter’s killer as
he held the knife that later took my
daughter’s life. I thought kneeling would
pacify him,” she said.
The story Mrs. Ashinwo told was one of
agony, climaxing at the moment she laid in
a pool of her own blood and tried with
every ounce of her waning strength to
crawl to where her daughter laid lifeless.
“I was dead; I don’t know why God brought
me back. But I am sure I was dead that
day. I tried to crawl and touch my daughter
but my strength failed. I could see she was
not breathing. There was blood
everywhere; mine and my daughter’s,” she
said.
According to her, the day of the attack
was the first time he would meet the killer,
Ogundele.
Mrs. Ashinwo said, “The first time we
spoke, he called me and introduced himself
as Engineer David. He told me he was my
daughter’s friend and I should help him to
appeal to my daughter to marry him.
Mrs Ashinwo
“I was surprised but I told him that my
daughter was a 30-year-old woman. She
was free to make her own decision about
who to marry.
“He called again some weeks later and
said he and my daughter had settled the
issue.
“The next time, he called, he was very
angry. He said he had never been
humiliated the way my daughter humiliated
him. It was few days after my daughter’s
birthday. He said he organised a birthday
party for her and invited his friends and
even bought a car as gift but she did not
honour the invitation.
“I did not know what to say. My daughter
already had a car and already has
someone else she wanted to marry. I told
him not to be annoyed and forget about
the issue since my daughter had made up
her mind.
“Prior to April 30, I started having some
bad dreams about my daughter and
became really concerned. I decided that it
was time to go and check on her to know
how she was doing.
“On my way to Ilorin, the man (Ogundele)
called again and said as soon as I get to
Ilorin, he would come and pick me at the
park. I said nothing. But since I did not
even know him I went straight to my
daughter’s place without calling him.
“When I met my daughter, she took me to
a woman, who seemed to be her
confidante. We ate and the woman told me
that my daughter had a fight with one man
called Engineer David that day and the
man threatened to kill her.
“I did not waste time; I stood up and told
her I must report to the police. But my
daughter told me to let the matter go. She
said I was just making a big issue out of a
small matter.
“She said that was why she did not like
telling me some things some times. I let
the matter go because I did not want to be
like an overzealous mother.”
But that was one decision that would
haunt Mrs. Ashinwo every second of every
day.
The following day, Sunday April 30, without
any hint about the danger that lurked in
the shadow, she and her daughter had just
got home from somewhere that day. As
they entered Oluwatosin’s flat, Ogundele,
who was said to be have been hiding
around the flat, cornered them in the flat.
Mrs. Ashinwo said, “He entered and locked
the door behind him and put the key in his
pocket. I had just finished bathing when
my daughter called out to me that he was
in the flat. I quickly dressed and prepared
to meet the man that had been disturbing
me so much with calls. When I saw him, I
said ‘Good day, pleased to meet you’ and
he replied that, ‘there is nothing good
about today.’
“As soon as I saw him, I sighted the knife
he was holding. I asked him what the
problem was and he kept quiet. I did not
understand what was happening. He was
saying so many things I did not
understand. I asked him if my daughter
owed him anything. I promised to pay back
everything. He said she did not owe him
anything. He was just angry.
“I told him that even if they offended each
other, it should not be that bad that it
would require the use of a knife. I told
them they could still be friends. When I
realised he had no intension of dropping
the knife, I went down on my knees. I was
begging him to drop the knife. Then, he
came to where I knelt and carried me up.
“Just when I thought the issue would end,
he rushed at Tosin and held her down on
the bed. He started stabbing her furiously.
As my daughter screamed, I rushed at him.
I could not just stand and he stared
stabbing me too over the body.”
Scars from stabbing on Mrs. Ashinwo’s back
By the time the attack was over, Mrs.
Ashinwo had been stabbed at least 10
times in her torso, with the knife going
through her throat in the
As all became quiet in the room where the
dying women lay, Ogundele, dropped his
weapon, the bloody knife and locked his
victims in the room, Saturday PUNCH learnt.
Minutes went by as Mrs. Ashinwo tried to
call out to her daughter who was bleeding
from every parts of the body.
She said she was so weak she could not
even call out to her daughter who had
become lifeless at that point.
Lucky for her, she heard someone in a
kitchen behind her daughter’s window. The
woman said she used the last ounce of her
strength to call the person, who later
raised the alarm.
By the time the door was broken down, it
was too late for Oluwatosin. She was
pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
As Mrs. Ashinwo told this story, there was
no doubt it was with tremendous agony as
she relived the gory details.
Saturday PUNCH had earlier reported that
Ogundele was arrested in Osun on
Saturday, May 14, after the police tracked
him down with undercover agents.
But Mrs. Ashinwo said the police have not
even contacted her to give evidence. She
said she could not understand why
Ogundele has not been charged to court.
The spokesperson for the Kwara State
Police Command, Mr. Ajayi Okasanmi, said
he did not have information about the
prosecution of the suspect when our
correspondent called him.
He said he would call back to give update
about the status of the case but had yet to
do so as of the time of filing this report.By chibaby naija 1