Tragedy struck on Monday at Osisioma, a suburb of Aba, the commercial
capital of Abia State when four-year-old male twins, suffocated to
death inside a car parked in front of their house. The boys, Chukwuemeka
and Chiemela Okechukwu, the only male children of their parents and who
were in nursery school at the Stella and Maris School in the city were
with their mother,
Mrs. Ngozi Okechukwu in the morning hours on that fateful day as they
could not go to school for undisclosed reasons. After a while, one of
their pregnant neighbours went into labour and Mrs. Okechukwu who is a
nurse, was called in for assistance. When the mother of the twins saw
the condition of her pregnant neighbour, she arranged and took her to
hospital and allowed the twins whose elder siblings went to school, to
play with other children in the compound.
However, as the twins were playing, nobody knew when they left the
compound and went to where some cars were displayed for sale beside the
Enugu/Port Harcourt Expressway, near the Osisioma Junction. Daily Sun
gathered that the two kids opened and entered one of the cars on
display, unnoticed and locked themselves in under the heat of the
scorching sun. When at about 1 pm the elder sisters came back from
school and could not see their younger brothers who they knew did not go
to school that day, they raised the alarm.
Their father, Levi Okechukwu Onwusoamaonye from Ahiaba Ubi in Isiala
Ngwa North Local Government Area, who had gone to work was alerted and
he came home. A search party was said to have been immediately raised,
which combed the area but to no avail. It was around 4 pm that the
children were seen inside the car already dead through suffocation. They
were rushed to a nearby hospital where doctors confirmed them dead.
When Daily Sun visited the house of the late twins, people were seen in
pensive mood discussing the incident.
Their mother, Mrs. Okechukwu, narrated how she was with the twins in
the morning of that day before she took a pregnant neighbour who was in
labour to the hospital. She said she was still at the hospital when her
husband called to inform her that the two boys were dead and that she
could not believe until she came back home and saw their corpses.
Mr. Okechukwu, the only male child of his parents who was short of
words over the death of his own only two male children said he could
only speak on the incident after the burial of the two kids that was
slated for today. Meanwhile, the bodies of the twins had been deposited
in a mortuary.
