Thug beat his wife to death with son’s skateboard... as the police waited outside home for 35 minutes
A JEALOUS husband beat his wife to death with their son’s skateboard while police waited outside for 35 minutes, a court heard.
Officers heard ‘ a number of bangs’ inside the house which Olubunmi Abodunde had entered despite bail conditions imposed the day before that banned him from the property following another violent episode.
Two officers arrived at 9.20am to take a statement from Taiwo Abodunde about the previous night’s incident and heard repeated banging noises inside.
But it wasn’t until 9.55am that they forced their way in after approval from senior colleagues, when they found Mrs Abodunde, 41, ‘obviously dead’ near the front door with her ‘skull smashed in’.
Abodunde, 48, who had been repeatedly investigated by Suffolk Police about domestic violence, was due to go on trial for murder but changed his plea to guilty after a jury had been sworn in.
Judge Martyn Levett, sitting at Ipswich Crown Court on Wednesday, warned him the only possible sentence was life imprisonment.
Meanwhile Suffolk Constabulary has referred itself to the Independent Office of Police Conduct, which confirmed three officers were under investigation.
Abodunde had a history of jealousy throughout his marriage and accused his wife of having affairs.
Police had been contacted a number of times over alleged domestic violence incidents before his wife’s death. He was arrested on November 27 last year when police arrived at the couple’s home in Newmarket and found Mrs Abodunde with a split lip. Later that day he was freed on police bail with a condition that he stayed away from the marital home.
But after working a night shift at Tesco, he went home just after 9am – later claiming he wanted to pick up his mobile phone. A postmortem examination later showed his wife had been throttled until she fell unconscious, then stamped on until her ribs were broken.
Her husband used the skateboard to kill her with blows so violent that it had been damaged.
Prosecutor Simon Spence KC said the banging that officers heard was likely to have been Abodunde continuing to attack his wife after she was unconscious or dead.
The court heard the couple, who had three children, arrived in the UK from Nigeria in 2022.
Mrs Abodunde had a job as a care home assistant in Cambridge but her husband, who had trained as a civil engineer, was unable to find work in his profession and took shifts at Tesco and Wickes.
After his arrest on November 28 for the murder, Abodunde was taken to hospital ‘ because he appeared to have some sort of mental episode’. He later told police he had acted in self-defence, saying: ‘She ran at me with a knife, I grabbed the knife and cut my hand. I was defending myself.’
But the court heard while he did have an injury to his hand, there wasn’t a knife near his wife’s body.
Nneka Akudolu KC, defending, said the level of violence was ‘completely out of character’ for her client and may have been affected by medication. Abodunde was remanded in custody and will be sentenced on May 9.
‘Some sort of mental episode’