A middle-aged woman, Linda Alapa, has been arrested in Lagos State for allegedly beating her 10-year-old housemaid, Joy Mbafan, to death.
Alapa, before beating the minor to death, was said to have also starved her severally.
The Punch reports that Mbafan lived with the suspect on Bolanle Oduniyi Street, Okegbegun, in the Ikorodu area of the state.
According to the report, the suspect was flogging the girl as punishment for an offence, in the wee hours of Tuesday.
The victim was said to have passed out and died afterwards.
Some residents, speaking on the incident, said they warned Alapa many times to desist from assaulting the victim to no avail.
A neighbour identified only as Ellen said, “She usually beats the girl for messing up their apartment.
“Around 3am on the day the girl died, I heard her crying as Alapa flogged her. I woke my husband up 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 in our premises in tears. They said Mbafan was dead and the woman’s husband was not at home that day.
“It was the landlord that told him about the incident on the telephone,” Ellen added, noting that Mbafan’s father was late while her mother was ill and Alapa had brought her to Lagos from a village in the eastern part of Nigeria.
“But she used to beat up and starve the girl of food. On several occasions, the girl would come to me to eat, saying her aunty did not give her food.”
At the Ikorodu General Hospital morgue where Alapa 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.
Confirming the incident, the state Police Public Relations Officer, PPRO, Dolapo Badmos, said, “I confirm the case. The suspect is under investigation while the corpse has been deposited in a morgue for autopsy.
“She will be charged to court soon,” she said.
Alapa, before beating the minor to death, was said to have also starved her severally.
The Punch reports that Mbafan lived with the suspect on Bolanle Oduniyi Street, Okegbegun, in the Ikorodu area of the state.
According to the report, the suspect was flogging the girl as punishment for an offence, in the wee hours of Tuesday.
The victim was said to have passed out and died afterwards.
Some residents, speaking on the incident, said they warned Alapa many times to desist from assaulting the victim to no avail.
A neighbour identified only as Ellen said, “She usually beats the girl for messing up their apartment.
“Around 3am on the day the girl died, I heard her crying as Alapa flogged her. I woke my husband up 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 in our premises in tears. They said Mbafan was dead and the woman’s husband was not at home that day.
“It was the landlord that told him about the incident on the telephone,” Ellen added, noting that Mbafan’s father was late while her mother was ill and Alapa had brought her to Lagos from a village in the eastern part of Nigeria.
“But she used to beat up and starve the girl of food. On several occasions, the girl would come to me to eat, saying her aunty did not give her food.”
At the Ikorodu General Hospital morgue where Alapa 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.
Confirming the incident, the state Police Public Relations Officer, PPRO, Dolapo Badmos, said, “I confirm the case. The suspect is under investigation while the corpse has been deposited in a morgue for autopsy.
“She will be charged to court soon,” she said.