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 with 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.
- Vanguard Newspapers
