From MOLLY KILETE. ABUJA
thirty-three-year-old Matthew Ankoor, who beat his eight months pregnant wife to death recently, has given his side of the story, claiming that his late wife’s church members destabilized their union.
The suspect, who is in police custody, and now sober and full of remorse, said he loved his wife and would not have killed her intentionally.
Ankoor, a father of three from Agbiki, Benue State, told Daily Sun that his late wife abandoned their family church, the Catholic Church, and started attending the Charismatic Renewal Movement, which did not go down well with him.
He said several pleas for his wife to stop attending the church fell on deaf ears even after he reported the matter to his in-laws, who settled the rift.
That notwithstanding, he claimed that his wife did not stop attending the church, which she joined four years ago.
Ankoor, who said he was a computer engineer and owner of his own business located at Wuse, Abuja, alleged that it was his wife who started the fight that led to her sudden death on June 5, 2017.
According to him, the deceased had held him by the collar of his shirt and began to fight him despite his pleas to her; it was when he could no longer tolerate her aggresiveness, as she was about suffocating him death, that he pushed her away.
After pushing her away from himself, he said she fell face-flat on the ground in the dark room and she might have hit her head on a hard object, which led to her death.
After falling to the ground, he said his wife kept shouting, “My chest, my chest,” and he went to get help.
In an interview with Daily Sun, Ankoor, said that he helped lift her from the ground to her feet and that she went to seek prayers from their neighbours before he went out to buy recharge card for his mobile phone:
He added that, on his way to purchase the recharge card, he had the urge to go back home and it was when he got home that he saw his wife on the ground outside their house with neighbours surrounding her, praying.
“When I saw her condition, I quickly rushed to the main road to get a taxi to take her to the hospital. Unfortunately, when we got to the hospital, the doctor confirmed she was dead,” he said.
Police told Abuja Metro, that upon hearing that the woman was dead, the suspect tried to hurriedly take the body away, but one of the neighbours who accompanied the deceased and the suspect to the hospital raised the alarm that the woman was beaten to death.
At that point, the doctor on duty insisted that the suspect had to get a police report before taking the body.
Not knowing what the doctor insisted on him getting a police report for, Ankoor called his relatives who accompanied him to the Wuse Police Station, where he reported the incident.
The police accompanied him to the hospital, where the doctor gave more explanation after which he was arrested and detained while the medical team conducted a surgery to evacuate the unborn child, which happened to be a male.
Ankoor, who said he met his wife in the vilage and married her nine years ago, said he regretted killing her but advised young men to carefully study the kind of women they wanted to marry before going into marriage.
He also advised young men to court their would be wives for a period of 10 years so that they would be able to know her well before marrying her because youthful exuberance forced him into early marriage.