By Desire Emmanuel with Agency Reports
A Nigerian living in the United Kingdom, described as a drug dealer who launched a ‘horrific, violent and random attack’ on a ‘kind, gentle and loving woman’ has been jailed for life for her murder, the Daily Mail of UK reported on Tuesday, March 23.
Chukwuemeka Michael Ahanonu, aged 24 years, who made £10,000 a week while on benefits selling drugs – targeted the 56-year-old woman, Nila Patel, as she alighted a bus and was making her way home.
After pulling her from behind, he punched her in the face with such severity that she fell on to the pavement. She was then kicked and stamped on as she lay on the ground outside Leicester Royal Infirmary.
Ms Patel, a single mother of two, suffered a fractured skull and a brain injury and died in hospital two days later.
Ahanonu, a former university student living in Peckham, south-east London, carried out the attack moments after flipping his BMW on its roof in broad daylight in Leicester city centre in June last year.
He had been driving erratically and dangerously around the city centre – swerving across lanes, driving through traffic lights, and towards a bus stop where people were waiting and pedestrians crossing the road.
Police found he had been smoking cannabis and was on licence at the time having been freed from a two-year sentence in July 2024, handed down after he was caught with £1,000 in cash and a machete after going through a red light in September 2023.
Ahanonu denied murder instead pleading guilty to her manslaughter, claiming diminished responsibility.
He was convicted of murder by a jury at Leicester Crown Court on Monday after a month-long trial.
Sentencing Ahanonu to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 21 years and six months on Tuesday, March 23, Judge Timothy Spencer said: “You murdered a wholly innocent woman. It was shocking, brutal and merciless.”
He added: “You were angry, you were looking for a victim. You selected her, in my judgment, because of three things.
“One was her gender, a woman – you would not have attacked a man. The second was her build and her height – 5. feet 4.iches tall and of slight build.
“The third thing, I’m satisfied, was her race. In an unguarded moment, you talked about ‘dirty Asians’.”
Ahanonu listened in the dock wearing a dark grey jacket and tracksuit bottoms while Ms Patel’s son and daughter, Jaidan and Danika Patel, read victim impact statements to the court.
