On September 22, 28-year-old Priscilla Ocheme visited a friend in the Lugbe area of Abuja. That Sunday was the last time her family would see her alive.
According to Grace Ocheme, Priscilla’s elder sister, the deceased had gone to visit an old male friend called Richard that fateful day. That was the first time they would be seeing face-to-face in 2024.
Accident or murder? This sums up the questions on the minds of Priscilla’s family following the suspicious circumstances that surrounded her death.
While sharing details of the incident during an Instagram live broadcast session on Monday.
Grace revealed that her younger sister and Richard attended Madonna University, where they became friends. When Priscilla left the school in her second year to continue her undergraduate studies at another private university, their friendship became strained. They would, however, resume communication afterwards.
FIJ learnt that while in Madonna, Priscilla suddenly came home on a particular day and insisted she no longer wished to attend the institution.
“She said if we don’t want her to die, she should not be forced to go back. It was later that my younger brother told me that she left because of Richard though he did not give me the details,” Grace said.
She also said that she had always been wary of Richard and had warned her younger sister to stop interacting with him.
“There was a day she was with me in August when her phone started ringing. She said, “Why is Richard calling me?” I had to tell her that I had a bad feeling about him and she should stop talking to him. She did not pick up his call on that day,” Grace narrated.
“They had been friends for long. But they stopped talking after she left Madonna. All of a sudden, they connected and started talking again.”
Also, according to Grace, all the times Priscilla visited Richard in his house before September 22, she had always gone with her younger brother, but she went alone on this particular day.
However, not without sending a message to her brother.
“Richard had come to our house before when my sister was still schooling in Madonna and Richard’s mom has even called my mom in the past to say she would like to have her as an in-law. I remember that my mom had said she was still young because she was around 17 years old then,” Grace said.
“Prior to that Sunday, she was misbehaving as if she was summoned. Then the next day, she now went to his house. I spoke with her on Sunday morning around 8:00 am. I also spoke with her around 2:00 pm.
“The last time we spoke was around 5:00 pm. She was still in his house at the time, but she did not tell me [about the visit]. She only told my brother.
“Then around 8:00 pm, she sent me a message to send her N10,000 and add it to her debt. When I got the message, I was carried away because I did not even know that she was there.
“She later sent a message to ask if I had sent it. I did not even ask her what she needed it for. She later asked if it had not entered [delivered]. I screenshot the debit and sent it to her. It was showing pending. I slept off after that time till the next morning.
“It was unlike my sister because she would have kept calling. I woke up around 5:00 am on Monday. As I remembered that she had asked me to send money the previous day, I checked and saw that it had been reversed.
“I just sent it back immediately even without calling to know if she still needed it or not. When I sent her a message, she did not respond or acknowledge the money.
“I later decided to go and check up on my mum where she lives. When I got there, she told me she had not seen Priscilla. At some point, I was like what sort of joke is this? My sister has never slept outside. She is somebody who does not sleep out.
“At that point, we were so worried. I called my younger brother, and he also said he had not heard from Priscilla. I then mentioned that she told me she was going to see her friend, Faheedah. That was when my brother said she went to see Richard.”
The moment Grace learnt that her sister actually went to Richard’s house, she and the younger brother called him.
They called Richard on Tuesday.
“Richard said Priscilla left his house on Sunday. He said she left around 9:14 pm. He said that he had ordered some food and was going to pick it up by 8:00 pm,” Grace said.
According to Grace, Richard said he left her sister at home, but by the time he was heading back home from where he had gone to pick up the meal, he saw someone who looked like her on a motorcycle.
“He sent her a message to confirm and Priscilla said she had left. The time my sister sent that message was 9:14 pm and he replied at 9:14 pm as well,” Grace said.
Grace said she questioned Richard’s attitude considering that he claimed it was drizzling, yet he allowed her sister to leave without accompanying her.
She said Priscilla had not seen him all year, but finally visited him on September 22 after repeated calls, only to leave his house in his absence, yet he did not take more action or show concern.
Amid the worrying situation, Grace said one of their aunts notified her that she got a call at noon on Monday, September 23, from a stranger.
This person had called via one of Priscilla’s numbers, which the aunt did not have in her contact list. She had thought it was a fraudster when the man mentioned the owner of the phone was involved in an accident.
When the aunt heard that the family was trying to ascertain Priscilla’s whereabouts, she checked the number via Truecaller and saw the name “Cilla”. When she sent the number to Grace for confirmation, it turned out that it was her sister’s number.
That was when they found out about the accident.
Grace said she called Richard immediately and told him to visit police stations in Lugbe to confirm the accident.
“My immediate younger brother went to Lugbe too. When he got there, he went to police stations in the area and asked. They said there was no accident. He also went to a particular station where they confirmed that there was indeed an accident close to Richard’s house,” Grace said.
“One of my uncles went there and the Lugbe DPO opened up to them that there was an accident and a lady was involved. They said they brought her unconscious around 9:00 pm to 10:00 pm. They said two good Samaritans brought her.
“My uncle asked: ‘Who are the two good Samaritans? What are their names? Did they write a statement?‘ The DPO said no. Even their phone number, they said they don’t know. They also did not have any information on the bike men who brought her. They said they don’t have any information from them. That was when we started getting suspicious.
“The DPO said the body was really really bad and that we should just go and bury our dead. My uncle was concerned. How bad can it be that the police would say we should go and bury the dead? When my uncle asked them to show a picture, there was no scar on her face.
“Richard was in the police station at the time. In the middle of the discussions, he went close to where the DPO was sitting to take a bottle of water and drink. My family was taken aback by his confidence to do that in the middle of the discussions. No sense of remorse, to learn that someone who had come to visit him had died. Nothing like that.
“When they later agreed for my uncle to see her body, by the time they opened her up, it was just her face. There was blood from her nose, mouth and eyes. She had a cut on her head. There was no scratch on her body. Her jean was intact.
“She was wearing a black jean and had a chiffon top, a black inner, a smart torch, a gold chain her phone. Her gold chain, smart watch, phone and power bank were not there. But her jean was intact.”
Then the family started to dig deep. Grace said they also felt that the police station had already been compromised.
So, they requested to move the case to the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID). This was where the police were asked to produce the good Samaritans.
“They did not have the good Samaritans on the first day. It was after two days or so that they said they had the good Samaritan,” Grace said.
Priscilla’s family learnt that the good Samaritans were block industry workers who disclosed that the accident happened between 8:30 pm and 9:00 pm.
This new information clashes with Richard’s earlier claim that he had chatted with Priscilla at 9:14 pm, and it led to more unanswered questions.
“The good Samaritans, according to police, said a girl was just lying down. They just heard a sound and he [one of them] ran [to the scene],” Grace recounted.
“When he got there, he saw plenty of people who said two bikes collided. He saw my sister lying on the floor. He stopped a bike. Then he and somebody carried her to the health centre. When they got there, she was unconscious.
“The hospital asked for a police report, and they said they don’t have it. From there, they moved her to the police station. That’s where they dropped her and the police took her to the Federal Medical Centre, Jabi, where they confirmed her dead. She was then taken to the morgue.”
Grace mentioned that when she first confronted Richard shortly after she learnt that Priscilla had visited him on the day she was last seen alive, he had noted that the road in his area was bad.
Because her younger brother had been to Richard’s house with their late sister before, they tried to locate the house in Goshen City Estate, Lugbe.
This was when Grace found that the road was not as bad as Richard had made it seem. She also noticed that the distance between Goshen City Estate and the police station was not much. Also, the estate was not far from where the accident happened.
“And when they checked her body, there was no scratch. If two bikes collided, at least there should be bruises on your hand. Your jeans would be stained. But her jean was clean,” Grace said.
“She’s quite busty, so she should have had bruises on her breast or something, but there was nothing like that. The bruises were only on her face.
“When we got to the State CID, Richard started fighting, saying he has a sister. We were expecting him to say something like, ‘Mommy, I did not kill your daughter’. But there was nothing like that.”
Priscilla’s elder sister said the family lawyer petitioned the force headquarters after they suspected irregularities at the SCIID.
“We involved the Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG), who called the Deputy Commissioner (DC) in the State CID, who said the case was still ongoing. The DG then directed us back to the State CID,” Grace explained.
“We said they should let us do an autopsy to know the cause of death, but on Friday (October 18), they released the guy without an autopsy being conducted and without informing us. They could not give proper information. They released him without an autopsy being conducted. Now, we need justice. We are crying out for justice.”
The family also discovered that someone was using Priscilla’s phone after the accident. Grace said her landlady had promptly informed her that her sister’s phone was still reachable. So her younger brother dialled the number.
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A man who answered their call said he had charged it to make calls, which shocked them because they wondered how he got the password of their sister’s iPhone. The man had even confirmed to them that the phone “belonged to a girl who had an accident”.
When he asked them to come for the phone shortly after, they alerted the police, but the phone became unreachable after that day.
“The police said my brother cannot go alone and that they would assign somebody to go with him. That was when we rushed to the headquarters. By the time we got back, we got carried away. They did not even assign anybody to follow my brother. From that day, the phone has not been reachable,” she said.
Grace also said that the police had provided a contact person for tracking who felt they were pestering him with calls:
“Whenever we call him, he will say we are disturbing him too much and that he’s doing his work. At some point, he said the phone was in Kubwa and that the process can take three months, six months or even a year.”
Grace revealed that the family is expected to pay about N1 million for the autopsy which would help them ascertain the cause of Priscilla’s death.
In a voice laden with pain, Grace said, “Her spirit is crying for justice. I pray that Nigeria will not happen to my sister. Whoever is involved in this death will pay with their life. With the kind of pain they are causing my mom and every one of us, the person has to pay.”
FIJ called Josephine Adeh, spokesperson of the FCT police command, six times on Monday, but she was unreachable. She had not responded to the messages FIJ sent to her via SMS and WhatsApp at press time.
— Source FIJ
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