A 29-year-old mason in Plateau State, Barry Chayi, has explained why he killed his estranged wife and chopped off the hand of his daughter with an axe.
Chayi, who is a resident of Kampala community in Jos North LGA of the state, made the revelation on Friday.
He disclosed that he married his estranged wife in 2013 and they lived happily.
“The problem started when I fell sick. The sickness made me unstable. Any time I took ill, my body used to shake. I needed a solution, so I went for treatment. The person who treated me gave me soap and instructed me to use it for bathing and that it would cure the sickness.
“When I returned home and told my wife, the condition did not go down well with her. It became a problem. Later, she left our house with our daughter and went to her father’s house and she never came back.
“After some time, she came back to our house with my daughter and said she wanted to pack her belongings. When I asked where she was going, she only said she was leaving the house but she did not tell me where she was going.
“I did not want her to leave so I tried to stop her from moving out of the house. In the process, we started fighting. We started struggling and I fell near an axe. It was then that I took the axe and hit her on the neck and she fell and started bleeding. That was what happened,” Chayi told The Punch.
He admitted using the axe on his eight-year-old daughter too.
“It is true that I used the axe to cut one of her hands, but it was not cut off completely,” Chayi said.
“It happened while I was fighting with my wife. She (my daughter) was around. She tried to intervene when I wanted to use the axe on my wife. That was why I also cut one of her hands.”
On killing his wife, the suspect said, “It was a mistake. I didn’t mean to kill her. I regret my action.”