Students found dead in Warri hotel

Two students of a secondary school (names withheld) in Uvwie Local Government Area of Delta State, were, on Wednesday, found dead in a four-star hotel.

The deceased were identified as Samson Omagbemi (15) and Darlington Taire (15).

Report said the duo died on Monday June 12 after they went for an outing at the hotel sequel to bring through with their Junior Secondary Certificate Examination.

The corpses of the pupils were reportedly later deposited by management staff of the hotel on Wednesday at the Warri Central Hospital morgue without the knowledge of the families.

How the duo died remains a mystery to family members of the two pupils as they alleged a cover up by the police and the management of the hotel in the circumstances surrounding the incident.

A source told Metro that the two students went to the hotel under the guidance of one of their teachers simply identified as Robinson after they were through with their exam that fateful day.

But a source from the hotel said in confidence that the duo drowned in the hotel’s swimming pool, noting that they paid N500 each to have access to the pool themselves.

Faamily members of the deceased disclosed that they had gone to report the unknown whereabouts of their sons at the Enerhen Police Station earlier.

Members of the Omagbemi family, Mr Rolland and Marcus Omagbemi, in particular, said the family also constituted a search party which visited all police formations around to check if their son was arrested and detained.

They added that on Tuesday June 13, with the help of staff of the hotel, they also searched the swimming pool and other places, but could not find their boy.

They said they were later called upon by the Ebrumede Police Station in Uvwie to come identify a corpse at the station.

On getting there, the management staff of the hotel and police officers from Ebrumede Police Station rather tendered a blurred photograph of their boy, but that they insisted to see the corpse of their son, Samson Omagbemi.

After much pressure and altercations, two police officers later accompanied the family to the Warri Central hospital mortuary where they identified their son, Samson and his colleague, Darlington Taire with their faces already masked.

They added that they were prevented by mortuary attendants from taking photograph shots of the deceased.

Meanwhile, during a chat with members the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Warri Correspondents’ Chapel on Thursday in Warri, Mr. Henry Omagbemi, speaking on behalf of the Omagbemi Dynasty, described the death of the deceased as “mysterious.”

He insisted that the family suspected a foul play, especially with the way and manner the incident is being handled by the hotel management and the police.

“We went to the mortuary and saw the two students in the mortuary. They didn’t look like people who were in the pool because the mouth and the face were bleeding.

But the legs were intact. If somebody is drowned in the pool, you will see some signs of swollen stuff and all that but nothing like that.

Before we finished, the two people that went with us disappeared on Wednesday,” he alleged.

Omagbemi called on the Inspector General of Police, IGP Ibrahim Idris to investigate the deaths and bring the perpetrators to justice.

“We want justice to be done. It looks mysterious to us. We want justice to be done. The truth of the whole thing should be told to us.

Covering somebody’s corpse is something else, taking somebody’s corpse to mortuary without the knowledge of the person and all that looks suspicious,” he reiterated.

Father of Darlington Taire, the second pupil, Mr. Morrison Taire, corroborated the report of Omagbemi, stating he was not informed that a teacher was leading his son or other pupils to any hotel for any function.

Meanwhile, an officer at the Ebrumede Police Station has said that the proprietor of the school and his teacher and the students who were said to have brought the slippers of late Samson Omagbemi to the station, would be interrogated.

The Delta State Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Andrew Aniamaka, when called on phone could not react immediately, but requested this reporter to send a text message which he hadn’t responded to before filing the report.