By Vincent Ujumadu,  Awka
RESIDENTS of the industrial town of Nnewi in Anambra State were shocked last week Wednesday when they saw the lifeless body of Miss Uzoamaka Offor, a 25 –year old nurse who was a staff of Chioma Hospital in the town.

Uzoamaka, who hailed from Isuochi in Umunneochi local government area of Abia State had, on the night of the incident, felicitated with her colleagues up to 10 pm before retiring to the nurses’ quarters on the third floor of the same building where the hospital is located only to be found dead about midnight.

Her mysterious death has been a subject of buck passing in the town. Her neighbours had said they heard a scuffle in her room at about the midnight and shortly after, there was a bang on the ground. Though they did not initially know what fell from the high rise building, it was only the following morning that it dawned on them that it was Uzoamaka’s body that fell from the top floor.

It was gathered that on sighting the body, everybody in the multi flat building ran away for fear of being entangled in the matter. According to one of the occupants of the building, “around 21 midnight, we started hearing some noise in Uzoamaka’s flat as if there was a fight.

But knowing that she was living alone, nobody took the matter serious. After some time, there was a bang on the ground and it was in the morning when we saw her body in front of the building that we realized that it was her body that was thrown down.

Uzoamaka had worked in the hospital for many years and her colleagues described her as an easy –going person.

Recently, she entertained her colleagues after the release of her post –UME results and informed them of her intention to further her education.

What surprised those who saw the body was that there were no bruises on her body to show that she fell from a high rise building as all the parts of her body were in place except what looked like a matchet cut on her head.

Her father, Mr. Augustine Offor, a mason, who narrated the incident to Saturday Vanguard amid sobs, said it was his sister-in-law who informed him that Wednesday morning that something tragic had happened to his daughter. He said: “My sister-in-law called me on telephone and said I should go to Chioma Hospital. When I got there, I saw the lifeless body of my daughter in front of the building and there was nobody in sight.

“I went to report the matter to the police at Nnewi and it was there that I met two doctors and two nurses working in the same hospital who came to make a report on the incident. I believe that my daughter was murdered and I want government and police to find the person who killed my daughter. This was a very promising girl whose future was bright and the only way to assuage our feeling is to find the killer and allow justice to prevail.”

He said, for instance, that information at his disposal was that a medical doctor working in the hospital (names withheld) was supposed to be on duty that Tuesday night, but left after 9pm only to return about 11pm to ask the where about of Uzoamaka. When told that Uzoamaka was off duty and had gone upstairs, the doctor went up, adding that it was not quite long that people began to hear what sounded like a struggle. Offor said it was the same doctor that later came downstairs and demanded for a torch light from the nurses on duty and thereafter went outside to point at the lifeless body of Uzoamaka.

According to him, Uzoamaka visited the family house at Nnewi on the evening of the Tuesday and stayed long before returning to the hospital, adding that he never knew that it was the last time he was going to see his daughter.

He said that Uzoamaka’s mother, Angelina, who was away on a visit to Abuja, behaved as if she had a premonition about her daughter’s death because she called severally to ask after Uzoamaka. Though she had not concluded her mission in Abuja, she returned the following day to witness what was happening.

Four staff members of the hospital who were detained after making statements at the Central Police Station, CPS, Nnewi, were later released, which made Uzoamaka’s father to complain that there appeared to be some kind of cover up. Already, Offor has petitioned the Anambra State commissioner of police, appealing to him to unravel the circumstances surrounding the death his daughter.

The petition, which was written on behalf of the family by an Nnewi –based legal practitioner, Chief Nso said it was curious that the police in Nnewi had not thoughtit proper to arrest the whole tenants of the building housing the hospital soon after the incident.

“They (police) saw a cutlass in the living room of the flat smeared with Omo detergent, but they did not take it. They were rather looking for a blood –stained knife. It appeared that the girl was stabbed brutally on the head and she died in a pool of her own blood,” the petition read in part.

Uzoamaka’s father said that the essence of writing the police commissioner was to preempt the disappearance of the killer, insisting that there was controvertible evidence to show that his daughter was murdered.

In the meantime, the body of Uzoamaka had been deposited at a private hospital in Nnewi.