73-Year-Old Nigerian Nanny, Oluremi Adeleye, Bags 15-Years In Jail For Doing What Is Considered A Common Practise In Nigeria
A Nigerian nanny in US, Oluremi Adeleye who was convicted in February, 2019, over the murder of an 8-month-old baby girl, Enitan Salubi (read here), has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Adeleye was sentenced on Friday in Prince George’s County, U.S. The Nigerian mum and granny, 73, was captured on home video unscrewing the lid of Enitan’s bottle and pouring around eight ounces of milk down her throat in less than 30 seconds, “essentially drowning her” in October 26, 2016.
Police reports say Adeleye was asleep on a couch inside the house when the baby, who was in a walker, began crying and woke the nanny. A video surveillance camera shows the nanny tried to feed the baby, but without success.
Adeleye then pulled the baby from her walker, removed the nipple from her bottle and forcefully fed her. She then poured “eight ounces of milk down the child’s throat in less than 30 seconds, essentially drowning her,” the Prince George’s County State’s Attorney’s Office said in a release.
Baby Enitan appeared to squirm and resist while being fed the first bottle, and then Adeleye forced the contents of a second bottle into her mouth, court documents said.
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After the baby became unresponsive, Adeleye called the baby’s father, who dialed 911 as he raced home. The baby was rushed to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
According to Washington Post, the septuagenarian was found guilty of first-degree child abuse and second-degree murder by Prince George’s County Circuit Court in February, Judge Karen Mason. Last week Friday, she was sentenced to 40 years in prison with all but 15 years suspended in addition to five years supervised probation upon release. Judge Mason said before handing down the sentence:
“While I don’t find the defendant is an evil-intentioned baby slayer, I also don’t find her actions were accidental.”
Adeleye testified in her own defense at her trial that she was “cup-feeding” the baby to ensure it didn’t go hungry, a custom in her home country. She and her attorneys said that she did not mean to hurt the child and that Enitan’s death was a “tragic accident.”
Adeleye had others testify in her defense, saying that cup-feeding — pouring liquid in one’s hand to feed children when they do not want to eat but need to be fed — was common in Nigeria. Adeleye said in court on the day the judgement was delivered:
“Please forgive me. I didn’t mean to kill your child.”
Adeleye, opted for a bench trial, in which a judge weighed her fate instead of a jury. In finding Adeleye guilty of all the charges against her, Mason said Adeleye lied to homicide detectives in recorded interviews about whether she unscrewed the cap of the bottle to feed the child.
The shifting story, Mason said, demonstrated a “consciousness of guilt.”
Enitan’s mother, Nikia Porter, said at the sentencing that she moved from the South Side of Chicago to escape gun violence that could have put her family in danger.
“I didn’t want to lose my child to a stray bullet…. I lost her to a formula.”