A middle-aged man, Lawrenze Uzor, at early at the early hours of Sunday, gruesomely gouged out his wife’s eyes, allegedly for ritual purposes in Umuahia, the Abia state capital.
Uzor, an aluminium worker, who is from Umuchieze in Bende Local Government Area, carried out the horrific act at around 1 a.m. at their home in Adiele Estate, Umueze Ibeku, Umuahia North.
According to reports, his wife, 38-year-old Amarachi Lawrence, a teacher at a well-known private school in Umuahia, was asleep when Uzor used a knife to remove her eyes.
The couple’s landlady, Madam Lovejane Nwaiwu, who was also injured in the attack, recounted the horrifying ordeal.
Speaking from the Federal Medical Centre, Umuahia, where she is receiving treatment, Nwaiwu said, “About 10 p.m. on Saturday, I heard the man shouting ‘Odogwu, Odogwu (mighty, mighty)’. I was worried as I had not heard the man and his wife, Amarachi, praying like that.”
“I started praying for them. After that, I couldn’t sleep until about 12 a.m. and was restless. At around 1 a.m., Amarachi began shouting, ‘Mummy, I have been killed.’ I opened my door, came out, peeped through their bedroom window, and saw the man pressing down on his wife with a knife in his hands,” she added.
Desperate to get help, Nwaiwu knocked on neighbors’ gates and called out to the Umueze community, but no one responded.
“After all attempts to call neighbors failed, I went to their parlour door and started knocking. Suddenly, he opened the door while holding the knife and tried to attack me. He cut me on the hand and slashed my face, knocking out some of my upper teeth.”
Nwaiwu managed to escape back into her house and locked the door.
Uzor then locked the compound gate and ran to a neighbor’s house, where he chillingly confessed that he had killed both his wife and his landlord’s wife.
In a state of shock, Nwaiwu called her mother and daughter, who alerted a church neighbor and the community vigilance team.
The team quickly responded and apprehended Uzor at the neighbor’s house.
