Sylvester Idowu in Warri
A 28-year-old housewife, Mrs. Mary Attah, has been sentenced to death by hanging by an Effurun High Court for stabbing her pastor husband with a kitchen knife and setting him ablaze.
The presiding judge, Justice E.I Oritsejafor, condemned accused person to death having been pronounced guilty on the one count charge preferred against her by the Delta State Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice.
The offence was punishable under Section 319(1) of the Criminal Code Law, Cap C21, Volume 1, Laws of Delta State of Nigeria, 2006.
Justice Oritsjafor while delivering the verdict, held that the prosecution led by an Assistant Director, Mr. Patrick Mekako, was able to prove beyond all reasonable doubt the essential ingredients of the offence of murder against the accused person.
Continuing, “From the evidence before this court and in particular the extrajudicial statement of the accused person, Exhibit A and the evidence of PW1 and PW2 which corroborates and is consistent with the facts contained in the said extrajudicial statement Exhibit A, I hold that the prosecution his proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accused person murdered her deceased husband on or about July 6, 2012, and I find the accused person guilty of the murder of Darlington Attah as charged. Accused person is accordingly, hereby convicted of the offence of murder.
“The sentence of this court upon you, Mary Attah is death by hanging by the neck till you be dead and may the Lord have mercy on your soul,” the court declared.
Prosecution, Patrick Mekako had told the court that the accused who was married to Darlington Attah (now deceased) with four children, on or about July 6, 2012 at Effurun within the Effurun Judicial Division did attack her husband with a kitchen knife and stabbed him in the neck as a result of an alleged phone call from the husband’s lover.
The court was further told that the accused was infuriated by the telephone call at a time they were having a ‘nice time’ which prompted her to rush to the kitchen, collected the knife and armed herself with pepper which she rubbed on her husband’s face to immobilise him before stabbing him in the neck.
Not satisfied, she doused her husband who was already weak as a result of excessive bleeding with fuel and set him ablaze. He later gave up the ghost at the Warri Central Hospital where he was rushed to.
