By Abimbola Ogunnaike
The Benue State Police Command have confirmed the arrest of the alleged killer of a 300-level Mass Communication student of Benue State University (BSU) whose corpse was recovered from a shallow grave last week.
The State Police Spokesperson, SP Catherine Anene, confirmed the development to newsmen on Wednesday, 1 March, 2023, in Markurdi, the state capital.
The late student by the name Erekaa Dooshima Naomi, was reportedly missing for three days before her lifeless body was discovered in a shallow grave in a vicinity opposite the varsity.
Witnesses had claimed that the late student’s phone, ID card, and blood-stained clothes were first recovered on Tuesday around the area where the body was later found in a shallow grave the next day outside the institution’s campus opposite the College of Health Sciences.
However, luck ran out for the deceased’s suspected killer, one Shagbaor Ugosor Japhet, barely a week after the incident as police nabbed him at his hideout in the Makurdi metropolis.
It was learnt that the suspect, Japhet killed his victim just so he would not pay back N150,000, which the late student handed over to him as house rent.
The 25-year-old suspect who is also a final year student of the same BSU allegedly received the sum of N150,000 as an agent from the deceased being payment for an apartment he rented out to her.
But, Japhet in the long run neither made the house available to the deceased nor returned the money to her as he was said to have confessed to using the money to gamble online
It was gathered that he later asked the unsuspecting deceased to meet with him at the apartment and that on her arrival; he descended on her with a machete, inflicted her with several cuts on the head and killed her in the process.
