An auxiliary nurse, Mrs. Folashade Idoko, accused of killing her husband, has denied the allegation. She said she wished she had died in his place.
Mrs. Idoko was arrested on Sunday night after allegedly stabbing her 32-year-old husband, Lawrence an engineer, to death at their 20, Kosoko Street, Ayetoro Lagos residence in Oto-Awori Local Government Area (LGA).
Denying the allegation, the woman, who described her husband as loving and caring, said they were struggling for the knife when it dropped on the late Lawrence’s laps, leaving a deep gash.
She claimed that the deceased used the knife to eat cucumber around 10pm before going to bed. Their quarrel, she said, started after she read a text sent to him by a woman.
Mrs Idoko said: “I swear that I did not kill my husband. How can I kill my husband? He was a loving and caring man and he didn’t joke with the well-being of his children. He took care of our needs.
“The knife fell and hit him on his lap. He was the one who kept the knife in the wardrobe after he ate cucumber around 10pm. Then, I was holding his phone because I wanted to change his Display Picture (DP) and ring tone.
“I wanted to put my picture as his DP. Then, a message came into his phone and it was from Zainab. I read the message and I now knelt down beside him and asked him why he was still in touch with her.
“We had an issue because of her in July because he sent her money and he promised me that he had stopped seeing her. But when I saw the message, I then checked his call log and I saw that he spoke with her that same day for seven minutes. So, I knelt down beside him and was pleading with him to tell me what she does that I am not doing.
“He insisted that they were not dating and I asked him if he could swear that there was nothing between them. It was my husband that brought out the knife that he would swear by it.
“As a Yoruba woman, I know it is bad to swear with an iron especially when you are lying. I told him not to swear with the knife because I knew he was lying and we started struggling with the knife. That was how it fell and hit him on his lap.
“I rushed and brought a towel to tie it. My husband also took one of my wrappers to tie it too because the blood was pumping out. I held him and we were going out so that we could go to the hospital and I called our neighbours to help me.”
The suspect said it took them about 40 minutes to get to the hospital, adding that the workers did not also attend to them early.
She denied that she was in the habit of beating her husband, describing the allegations as false.
Mrs Idoko said: “They do not like me. I have only one friend there and she knows the truth. I usually told her each time my husband beat me up, even when I was pregnant and he attempted to strangle me. That was when I used the power bank I was holding to hit his ear and he got injured.
“Our neighbours know that my husband is the one who used to be beat me. But he hasn’t beaten me since this year because we agreed we would stop fighting. The issue about the beer parlour was a lie fabricated by the owner of the place. She lied because when my baby was five-month-old, my husband beat me up and I packed my things that I was going.
“As I was going to my parents’ house, I saw him and others drinking and I went there and told them that, so, they accommodated my husband at the bar after he had beaten me. I didn’t fight anyone, I just left. It was when I came back that I started hearing that the bar owner said I beat my husband and made trouble at her place. That is a lie.
“I do not know what to do now. I wish I was the one who died instead of my husband. How do I explain to my children when they grow up that their father died while we were struggling over a knife? How do I even clear my name from this falsehood that has been said about me?”