BY TIMOTHY AGBOR, OSOGBO
The Osun State Police Command, on Sunday, said it had commenced a probe on circumstances surrounding the suicide by a teenage undergraduate, Victor Tomiwa Olonade, in Ilesa.
The 19-year-old boy was found hanging on a noose in his parents’ compound few minutes after he returned from his school, Ipetu Ijesa College of Technology, Osun State on Saturday.
The deceased, a student of Computer Engineering Department of the institution, had left his school to visit his parents’ apartment at Isokun area of Ilesa at the weekend and had requested to have a discussion with his mother.
He was said to have been found by neighbours and other residents hanging on a rope within his parent’s rented apartment.
In an interview with Olonade’s octogenarian grandfather, Enoch, the deceased returned from school and had requested to have a discussion with his mother, but his mother was not at home as at the moment he arrived.
Enoch, who was sobbing profusely, expressed shock at the sudden and strange death of the teenager, revealing that, “his (Olonade) mother just sent him N80,000 yesterday (Friday) to pay his school fee. I always send money to him whenever he complained of fund paucity. I am done for.
“In spite of all I passed through with my daughter to give you (deceased) the best parents can do for their children, you chose to part with us in this gruesome manner, Pa Enoch lamented.
It was gathered that the deceased, who was raised by a single mother (name withheld), had earlier phoned her to have an important discussion with her, but the mother was said to have gone to a church for service.
Few minutes after the student’s corpse was discovered, the mother rushed back home to know why her son had wanted to see her urgently.
She was, however, surprised when sympathisers who had gathered at the building prevented her from entering her compound in order not to see Olonade on the noose. When the sad news was broken to her, she wept bitterly.
Though the cause of Olonade’s suicide was yet to be known because there was no suicide note found with him, traditionalists were contacted to perform some rites to persuade the god of thunder (Sango) to avert the recurrence of the evil in the family.
Confirming the incident in a statement by the Command’s Public Relations Officer, Yemisi Opalola, she explained that the deceased was found hanging in his father’s compound on Saturday.
The command also claimed that when its officers visited the scene of the suicide to recover the corpse, there were no signs of violence on the body.
The statement reads in part, “At about 2:30pm, on Saturday, one Agboola Olusola of 049 Isokun Street, Ilesa, reported at Ilesa ‘A’ Division that Olonade Tomiwa Victor, aged 19 years, a student of Ipetu Ijesa College of Technology, Osun State, was found dead by hanging in a compound with telephone cable.”
