Court to admit evidence of Dowen College student ‘confirming attack’ on Oromoni

The coroner’s inquest into the death of Sylvester Oromoni (Jnr), the deceased student of Dowen College Lagos, has received audio where the boy’s colleague claimed he was attacked.

Oromoni died last November after he was alleged to have been beaten by five colleagues for refusing to join a cult.

His father had claimed he was attacked and fed a liquid chemical that eventually led to his death.

Dowen College however dismissed the claim and alleged that the boy sustained injuries while playing football.

Two autopsies were carried out, one by the Delta police and the second by the force’s Lagos command.

The first autopsy had revealed that Oromoni died of “acute lung injury due to chemical intoxication”.

The department of public prosecution (DPP), after the second autopsy, said instead that Oromoni died naturally.

The case has been before the Ikeja high court after the sitting was transferred from the Epe magistrate court.

Sylvester Oromoni (Snr.), the father of the deceased, testified after his daughter at the latest sitting on Monday.

Mikhail Kadiri, the magistrate, also barred journalists and the public from proceedings during the daughter’s testimony.

After Oromoni (Snr) took to the witness cubicle for his testimony, the family presented for admission evidence documents and a box belonging to the deceased but said to have been damaged during the alleged fatal attack.

They also presented a flash drive containing two audio files and videos capturing the deceased before his death.

In one of the audios, a colleague to the late Oromoni claimed the deceased was attacked by three to five students.

He said he had reported the matter to Dowen’s vice-principal and was asked to write a statement to that effect.

The student claimed he had a torchlight on the night of the attack but didn’t get to see the faces of Oromoni’s attackers.

Anthony Kpokpo, counsel to Dowen College, argued that the evidence submitted was deliberately kept from them.

Kpokpo asked that the files, videos, and audios be sent to all parties before the witness can be cross-examined.

“The videos, audios, and the box have always been in the custody of the deceased family but were not referenced in the statement of oath earlier field. In this circumstance, we are constrained to go and review,” he told the court.

Izuchukwu Ohajinwa, another Dowen counsel, requested that information be made available on the source of the CCTV videos submitted to enable him to ascertain their authenticity.

Responding to the claim that the family was “springing up surprises” on the defence side, Andrew Efoli, counsel to the Oromoni family, said he wasn’t opposed to adjournment to allow all parties to review the audio and videos files.

Kadiri postponed this line of inquiry to February 14 and adjourned to February 8 for the pathologist’s testimony.