A High Court in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital has convicted one Dasuka Loveday for manslaughter.
The judgment delivered by Justice Adolphus Enebeli found Loveday guilty of stabbing Goton Fred to death with a knife on the 26th January 2011 at a market square in Wiiyaakara community, Khana Local Government Area of Rivers State.
The judgment explained that though Loveday was an eighteen-year-old student of a secondary school in Bori when he committed the crime, he failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt his claims of self-defence.
Justice Adolphus Enebeli, therefore, found Loveday guilty of the offence of manslaughter but adjourned to Friday 20th December 2019 for sentence.
The State Prosecution Counsel, Cordelia Eke, in an interview with our newsmen, expressed sadness over the incident that led to the death of Goton Fred.
She stressed that the Defendant got into a fight with the deceased over a minor allegation of dating late Fred’s younger sister.
She said further that Dasuka Loveday was apprehended by the youths of the community at the scene of the incident, stressing that the matter which has been on prosecution for eight years but has finally come to a just conclusion.
She advised that activities of Youths to be put in check as the knife that was used to stab late Goton Fred was the same knife in his possession as at the time of his death.
“The Defendant took a knife that was in possession of the deceased and used it to stab him, on both sides.
“It is not a good story because the deceased is not expected to go about with a knife, he may have intended to hurt the Defendant but at the end of the day, he died.
“This underscores the effect of youth rascality, cultism because these are the things that give young people impetus to carry a knife to stab one another.
“Fred is gone forever and the Defendant now is convicted for manslaughter which attracts life imprisonment”
Counsel to the defendant declined to comment on the judgment.
