A 37 years old painter sentenced to d#ath by hanging for killing 69 years old woman

A 37- year-old painter, Olaniyi Abegunde, has been sentenced to d€ath by hanging for the m¥rder of a 69-year-old woman, Grace Ajibola, in Oyo State.  

 

On March 17, 2020, a few weeks before her 70th birthday, the late Ajibola, an evangelist of the Christ Apostolic Church (CAC), Oke Imole, Agbeni, Ibadan, was called at her house.

Olaniyi was found guilty of the two counts of armed robbery and murder by Judge K. B. Olawoyin of the Oyo State Fiat Court 3, sitting in Iyaganku, Ibadan, on Thursday, March 16, 2023.

In his ruling, Judge Olawoyin informed the attorneys that there was no need for allocates from them because the charges involved serious offenses.

And he had given Olaniyi a death sentence of "d€ath by hanging by the neck till death or by lethal injection" for each count charge.

The court found that the prosecution, which was led by Mrs. K.K. Oloso-Olayiwola, Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions at the Oyo State Ministry of Justice, and S.A. Osuolale, had established their case beyond a reasonable doubt that Olaniyi committed the alleged offenses. 

The court also found that the testimony of the five prosecution witnesses, including Dr. Clement Abu Okolo, the pathologist from the University College Hospital who performed In addition, Justice Olawoyin ruled that Olaniyi had failed to provide evidence to support his allegation that he had been tortured in order to write his confessional statement, concluding that his assertions before the court were blatant lies given that his testimony corroborated what he had written.

There was no evidence that he had been tortured.

Less than an hour after killing evangelist Ajibola, it was discovered that he had used one of her cards to withdraw N120,000 in three installments of N40,000 each from her account. The prosecution presented images from the Close Circuit Television (CCTV) of the ATM in a bank close to the deceased house that showed Olaniyi's image as proof.

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