Abuja — A housewife, Mrs Kareen Opara, has gone underground after
allegedly stabbing her son’s wife, Esther Oluchi, to death in Anguwa
Baba area of Nasarawa State. But the police have launched a hot chase to
fish out the suspect.
The suspect, who was living in the same neighbourhood with his son,
Chinedu and the deceased wife, hailed from Umueze Ihitte/Uboma Local
Government Area of Imo State. She was alleged have been at loggerheads
for sometime over a picture taken by the deceased at the wedding of
Kareen’s daughter, last December.
Trouble was said to have broken out between the late Oluchi and her
mother-in-law when it was reported to her that Kareen was caught at a
herbalist’s home with one of the photographs she took at her son’s
wedding.
In a bid to retrieve the picture, Oluchi approached Kareen and
pleaded with her to return the said picture to her but she ignored all
pleas and rather took offence for the effrontery of her daughter-in-law.
Angered by what she saw as “confrontation” by her son’s wife, she
immediately confronted Chinedu and warned him to call his wife to order
or risk being punished along his spouse.
Unknown to the son that the mother had not forgiven his wife for
daring to ask her to return her picture, Chinedu tried to mediate in the
spat to appease his mother and the wife.
Family sources said a peace meeting summoned by Chinedu to reconcile
his mother with the late wife turned violent, as the mother who was
armed with a sharp machete, went for her daughter-in-law, who was
carrying one of her two daughters on her back and stabbed her in the
tummy. The machete pierced through her abdomen and she bled to death.
Sources said she was five-month pregnant.
Meanwhile, the suspect’s husband, son and a neighbour, who were
arrested in the wake of Oluchi’s murder, have been released by the
Nyanya Divisional Police Station and asked to be reporting there weekly
until the matter was disposed off.
But the mother of the late Oluchi, Lauretta Anyanwu, told Vanguard,
yesterday that it was wrong for the police to release the suspects when
Kareen had not been arrested.