The police in Lagos State have arrested a middle-aged woman, Linda Alapa, for allegedly beating her 10-year-old housemaid, Joy Mbafan, to death.
Mbafan lived with the suspect on Bolanle Oduniyi Street, Okegbegun, in the Ikorodu area of the state.
Punch Newspaper learnt that Alapa was flogging the girl for a misdemeanor when she passed out and died afterwards.
At the Ikorodu General Hospital morgue where she had gone to deposit Mbafan’s corpse, a doctor on duty was said to have noticed marks of violence on the body and alerted the police at the Sagamu Road Division.
A police source told our correspondent that after interrogation, Alapa confessed to beating the girl, adding that she would be charged with murder.
“She wanted to absolve herself of the death of the victim, but for the doctor on duty who raised the alarm after a close examination and she was arrested. There are marks of violence on the body of the deceased and she did not deny beating her.”
Some residents of Bolanle Oduniyi Street, who spoke to the media on Wednesday, said they had warned her many times to desist from assaulting the victim to no avail.
A neighbour of the suspect said Alapa did not only beat the girl but also starved her of food.
The woman explained that, “she usually beat the girl for messing up their apartment.”
“Around 3am on the day the girl died, I heard her crying as the woman (Alapa) flogged her. I woke up my husband to intervene. He said he was tired of the woman’s insults. After a while, she stopped crying.
“It was when I came back from work that afternoon that I saw a crowd on our premises in tears. They said Joy (Mbafan) was dead. The woman’s husband was not at home that day. It was the landlord that told him about the incident on the telephone.”
The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, SP Dolapo Badmos, in a text message, said, “I confirm the case. The suspect is under investigation while the corpse has been deposited in a morgue for autopsy.”
Source: The Punch Newspaper
It is well…Lord have mercy