Tragedy struck at 19 Ntueke Street, Awada Obosi, Onitsha, Saturday night when businessman and father Stephen Edwin Nnadiogu stabbed his four biological children and a housemaid to death.
The man died hours later after drinking a lethal substance suspected to be acid.
Speaking to Daily Sun at the scene of the incident, chairman of tenants residing in the four storey apartment building, Abuchi James, said that he was taking his bath at around 8pm he heard noise coming from the building. He said that on coming out he saw a girl, a relation to Edwin’s wife, shouting from the 3rd floor.
Abuchi said the late Mr. Nnadiogu moved into the apartment barely a year ago and was a blood relative to the landlord, who hails from Isunjaba, Imo State.
“She told us that she was chased away by the man who told him to run for her life because something terrible will happen right away,” the witness said.
“She said the man used a sharp knife to stab to death the four children aged between 4 and 12 after locking the door firmly to prevent any intruder from distracting him in accomplishing his plans. When we forced the door open, we were confronted by the gory sight of the dead bodies with blood splashed everywhere and we had to call the police immediately. The man who committed the act was also lying down in a corner of the room in a semi unconscious state.”
The man’s wife, a nurse, Daily Sun gathered, was not at home when the murder-suicide occurred, while her sister, who raised the alarm after the act, escaped becoming a victim herself.
Onlookers and sympathizers have been thronging to the compound, with people trying to make heads or tails of what drove Nnadiogu to murder his own children.
A police source from Awada Division who didn’t want to be quoted said the police visited the scene immediately and evacuated the corpses, while the culprit died on their way to the hospital. The source said Nnadiogu’s wife has been questioned on what might have led her husband to murder-suicide.
