The grieving father of the late Whitney Adeniran, a 12-year-old student of Chrisland International School, Opebi branch, Lagos, who died under mysterious circumstances during the school’s inter-house sports competition on 9 February 2023, Mr. Michael Adeniran told the court on Monday that his daughter died before being taken to the hospital by the school management.
Adeniran who instituted an action against the school following his daughter’s controversial demise made the statement while being cross-examined by the school’s lead counsel, Bolaji Ayorinde, SAN at the resumed hearing of the suit at Ikeja High Court.
Whitney’s father had accused the school management of negligence that led to the untimely death of his daughter who left home that day hale and hearty.
Whitney, a JSS 2 of the elite school was allegedly electrocuted during the school’s inter-house sports held at Agege Stadium on February 9th, 2023.
While being cross-examined by Ayorinde, SAN, Adeniran told a Lagos State High Court in Ikeja that his daughter was allegedly dead at the stadium before she was taken to the hospital.
However, there was a mild drama in the court between the defendant and plaintiff under exhibit PW1A, which was issued where the name of the deceased was wrongly written. The issue was resolved and the matter continued
Restating his earlier assertion about his daughter’s death, Adeniran told the court that he was informed by the school nurse that his daughter was already dead before she was taken to the hospital.
He said the nurse told him the deceased eyes had dilated but she could not confirm her death because she was not a doctor.
Speaking further, Ayorinde, SAN inquired about the medical condition of the deceased from his father whether she had any severe illness.
But Adeniran said his daughter was hale and hearty and didn’t have any ‘health issue’ that needed urgent attention.
The Lagos State Government had on March 31, 2023, arraigned Chrisland School Limited, Opebi, and its principal, vice principal, and two others over the death of one of the school’s students, Whitney Adeniran.
They were arraigned alongside the school before Justice Oyindamola Ogala.
The defendants were Ademoye Adewale, (Cotton candy vendor), Kuku Fatai, Belinda Amao (Principal), and Victoria Nwatu.
The defendants were standing trial on two counts bordering on involuntary manslaughter as well as reckless and negligent acts preferred against them by the state.
At the resumed hearing of the trial, yesterday, Adeniran who is the first prosecution witness narrated this to the court during cross-examination by the school’s counsel Bolaji Ayorinde (SAN).
When asked if Whitney was absent from school on February 2, 2023, due to illness, Adeniran replied,” Yes, she was absent from school, but she was not ill.”
According to Mr. Adeniran, on January 20, 2023, the school called his wife (the deceased’s mother), to inform her that Whitney was ill.
Thereafter, his daughter was then taken to Inland Specialist Hospital at Ikeja and the doctor prescribed some drugs for her to be taken and the dosage but that he didn’t know the name of the drugs.
When asked if he knew the name of the drugs, he explained that he got to know the name of the drugs from the doctor’s report obtained from the hospital issued on February 16, 2023.
Adeniran mentioned the names of the drugs as nitrazepam 5mg and amitriptyline, 12.5mg which he read from an exhibit before the court.
Asked if he was informed by the Agege Central Hospital and Diagnostic Limited that the deceased died of cardiac arrest, the witness replied that he was informed that she died of cardiac arrest.
He told the court that he could not remember anybody informing him that oxygen was administered to her at the hospital.
The witness also told the court that he could not remember if the school nurse mentioned anything about applying cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on the deceased.
However, the case was adjourned till January 24, for continuation of trial.
Background
PUNCH reports that within the period of the sad incident, Whitney’s mother Mrs. Blessing Adeniran, in a video on her Instagram page said that she was told her daughter slumped and had been rushed to the hospital.
Mrs. Adeniran said she immediately rushed to the hospital but had a hard time finding it because she was given the wrong address. However after she finally located where her daughter was, she said Whitney was already dead and her lips and tongue were black.
Narrating her ordeal, she said, “We drove out of the stadium to the gate, we asked the gatemen (for the hospital), they didn’t know. As we were driving around we were asking people where we can find Central Hospital but they all said they only knew Agege General Hospital. When we couldn’t locate the place we decided to go to Agege Central Mosque and on our way to the mosque, we saw the school bus packed, so we knew we were at the place.
“I jumped down from the car when we saw the school bus and rushed in. I saw the staff that went with her (Whitney) and I asked her ‘Madam where is my child, what happened, why did she faint’ she (the staff) said ‘I don’t know, she’s in there’. I went in there and I saw my daughter’s corpse, Desola didn’t say anything to me. I went in there and I met my daughter on her deathbed, she was already dead.
“She was drenched, soaked to the skin, water was dripping. I knelt down, I called on God, I shouted, I screamed. I felt her pulse, there was no pulse. My daughter was silent. I asked the doctor what happened to my daughter and he said from the look of things she suffered from cardiac arrest.”
No proper first aid
Continuing, she said, “How does a 12-year-old have a cardiac arrest? No pre-existing heart condition, no pre-existing medical condition. She was hale and hearty, she was not sick in any form. Even if she will die from cardiac arrest why should one arrest kill a healthy teenager? Let me state this, that by the time I got there, my daughter’s lips and tongue had already turned black.”
Blessing also revealed that her daughter was not taken to a hospital but an immunisation centre, adding that there was no proper first aid management.
She said, “My child was not taken to a hospital, she was taken to an immunisation centre but that is not even my pain. My pain is there was no proper first aid management, there was nothing that was done for her; she was brought to the hospital dead.
“Because when her medical report came in, it said dead on arrival. When my husband came he came in to pick his child to take her to another hospital, he came in and met her dead. He screamed, shouted, ‘Desola, daddy is here, stand up. What is happening to my child’. My husband knelt down crying begging the doctor ‘help me, this is my first child’.”
