‘How I escaped death’: Girl who escaped rape, though stabbed and brutalised recounts ordeal

By Sunmola Olowookere
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Adebimpe Owolafe is a pretty young woman  and a student of Osun State Polytechnic. March 21, 2019 would have been the day she breathed her last at a tender age of 23 but for providence.

In recent times when sexual crimes seem to abound, the narrow escape that fate granted to this young woman is extraordinary.

Following an attack in which she was stabbed with a knife and brutalized allegedly  by a lone assailant, whom she identified as Juwon Badmus,  Adebimpe was hospitalized for a week at the Ondo State Specialist Hospital, Akure.  In this write up, She narrated the thirty-minute attack made on her life around Abusoro area, Akure in a chat with The Hope.

“On this fateful day, I was coming home from my sister’s house. I usually go there to help her because she had just put to bed. I had alighted from the taxi and was rushing home because it was late when someone grabbed me from the back.

“At first, I thought it was a friend playing pranks on me  I tried to wriggle free of his tight grasp but he tightened his arms around me the more”.

She explained that she then became alarmed as she wondered who would  rescue her because it had just rained which  made all the shop owners around to close their shops  early for the day.

She continued, ” there was no electricity supply due to the rain. Most people had put on their generating sets. Therefore, no matter how much I shouted no one heard my cries for help under the din of the generators.

“He told me that I should stop shouting and that he only wanted to have sex with me. He threatened that he would kill me if I did not cooperate with him and brandished the knife in my face.

“I refused him still because I could not imagine doing such with a stranger. He grew angry and then he stabbed me with the knife in his hand. I realized then that I was in serious danger”

She explained that all through her scuffle with him, she never realized that the knife made a mark on her. She thought that it had missed her as she was aggressively adamant that he would not have his way with her.

She narrated that he hit her with his fist several times and at a point strangulated her so she would not shout for help again. By then, she said that her assailant had lost his knife during her struggle with him.

“Then he started to drag me into a fenced enclosure. This made me to have bruises on my arms and legs because he was dragging me through the shrubs. Still I struggled with him. He hit my head against the fence. Then he took a block and broke it on my head in a bid to subdue me.

” By then, I was at the point of death and I began to weep and plead with him that he should let me go as no help was forthcoming. Then divine help came in the form of his greed”, she narrated.

The assailant apparently tired of the scuffle  changed his mission and asked  if she had any cash in her bag.

By then, she said that her bag had dropped off when he was dragging  her  through the shrubs and she told him that it was on the road and that the bag contained N35,000  which was meant to buy foodstuffs for her sister’s baby christening.

She explained further that before he went to look for her bag, he threatened to hit her with a log of wood if she  run away.

The young girl had taken her life in her hands and sprinted over the wall as soon as he walked away to look for her bag in spite of his threat.

She claimed that rather than running home and risk being caught by him in the deserted street, she  ran into a building whose door stood ajar and it was the occupants that rescued her and escorted her home.

At home, her family tended to the bruises on her head, legs and hips and then they bade her to take her bath.

According to her, it was then that she discovered that the knife had entered into her abdomen and  some of her intestines hanging out.

 She was rushed to the hospital where she was admitted and treated at the Accident and Emergency section of the State Specialist Hospital, Akure pending the next day when a doctor would be available to carry out a surgery on her.

According to her medical report signed by one Dr Aminu A.A at the hospital, she was admitted on 21 March, 2019 with wounds on the face, abdomen and knees.

It explained further that after her treatment, surgery and recuperation, she was discharged on 27 March, 2019.

Adebimpe spent a week at the hospital before her wounds healed and as providence would have it, her supposed assailant had been caught by the police and was arraigned at the Akure Magistrate Court.

Subsequently, the case had been adjourned to May 15 while he was ordered to be remanded at prison custody pending the determination of the case.