The 911 call regarding the fatal stabbing of a Nigerian American by his girlfriend has been released to the public. In the audio, the young man can be heard saying he can’t feel his arm as the frantic girlfriend cries for help and apologizes to him for whatever she did.
This week, prosecutors released some heavy-hitting evidence from their discovery to the world. One of the items shared was the emergency dispatch call made by Courtney Clenney, a Miami-based OnlyFans model, with millions of followers on Instagram, after she fatally stabbed her boyfriend, Christian “Toby” Obumseli in the chest.
The call was for help, but as she tried to give the address to the service worker on the other line, the young internet influencer sobbed uncontrollably and told her boyfriend she was sorry.
“My boyfriend is dying of a stab wound,” Clenney tells the 911 operator.
As the dispatcher is attempting to calm Clenney down and get the address to where they are, Obumseli is heard saying, “I’m gonna die. I can’t feel my arm.” In response to his comment, the model, who once bragged that she loved dating rich Black men, said, “Baby, I’m so sorry.”
The prosecution, according to The Miami Herald, believes Clenney stabbed her unarmed lover with a kitchen knife to the heart on Sunday, April 3. The 26-year-old and legal team do not dispute that she stabbed Obumseli, but assert she did so in self-defense.
The Obumseli family’s lawyer Larry Handfield said the 911 call is self-explanatory, putting on display in a raw way exactly how Clenney felt in the moment. He said, “It shows her state of mind. She’s saying she’s sorry because she’s realizing what she’s done. She’s not saying, ‘I was defending myself.’ ”
Miami-Dade state attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle also agrees that there was intentionality in the stabbing. She said, “The knife entered Christian’s chest in a downward angle to the depth of 3 inches.” The prosecution believes the way Obumseli was stabbed suggests he was not injured accidentally.
Sabrina Puglisi, the young woman’s defense attorney, says the 911 calls show a devastated lover trying to get him help, suggesting, “This is not someone that stabbed somebody and didn’t care. Obviously, you can hear from her emotions she’s asking for somebody to come quickly to help.”
In addition to the 911 call, police bodycam video of a conversation between Clenney and the Miami-Dade Police Department a day before the killing was also released.
Employees from the One Paraiso building, where the two lived since January and rented a luxury three-bedroom apartment on the 22nd story, called the police complaining that there was a domestic disturbance between the troubled couple on Friday, April 1 in the evening and Saturday, April 2 in the morning.
A police report states when officers arrived at their swanky apartment, Clenney “appeared intoxicated.”
Footage shows a combative Clenney explaining to police that she believes her boyfriend is “stalking” and “sleeping in the elevator” near the unit. As officers try to establish what was going on and share with her that they could find him and remove him from the property, she whimpered, “I was told I would get a chance to speak.”
All of the officers tell her to go on and try their best not to interrupt her, except to get clarity on points.
“Are you going to listen to me?” she asked, before getting on her cell phone. At this point, she stumbled between talking to the person on the call and the officers standing in front of her.
One officer walked away to speak to someone else in the building and Clenney grew upset, “Can you please listen to me?” The officer, whose bodycam video was released, encouraged her to continue. This is when she moved in closer and started to whisper to them.
“Can you guys please listen to me? I am serious. I broke up with my boyfriend,” she said softly, but still firm. “He doesn’t pay any rent. I don’t care. I hold it down. But I broke up with him a week ago.”
She told them that her mother flew in to be with her for a week, but he continued to creep around her apartment. On the day of the recording, Clenney said she took her mother to the airport.
“I stayed in my apartment all day, I didn’t take my dogs out, because I was afraid he was going to be down here.” She said when she finally walked her dog, he was there and she asked him to please allow her to walk her dogs in peace.
Ultimately, she said she wanted a protective order to prohibit him from coming around.
“I want a restraining order against Christian Obumseli. I’m serious. Where can I do that? How can I make myself first? ‘Cause I know him and I know he’ll do it,” Clenney begs.
One of the cops explained to her multiple times that she needed to go to court to get a restraining order. The officer also explained to her because he legally lives there with her, authorities couldn’t even issue a trespassing warning to Obumseli.
“I have not always been a victim, but like right now I am the victim in this situation,” she said.
Puglisi believes the video is proof that she was in a domestically abusive relationship, asking for support from authorities and hoping they can help.
“It’s very clear from the video she looks upset. She’s emotional. She’s crying. She’s upset that she can’t even walk her dogs all day for fear of being followed by Obumseli,” her counsel said.
She further added according to WPLG-TV Local 10 News, “It’s a snapshot in time. it doesn’t really tell you the whole picture.”
The family’s lawyer scoffed at that defense, saying, “Everyone knew they had an on-again-off-again relationship,” and that video is not pertinent to Obumseli’s killing less than 48 hours later and he was never arrested for any of her allegations. Handfield also pointed to a time when Clenney actually was arrested.
The previous year, while in Las Vegas, Clenney was arrested after she threw a glass at Obumseli in their hotel room. Obumseli told police about her actions, and she was detained and booked.
“There is a pattern when she drinks, she becomes a different person. What the defense is seeking to do is to try to use an incident in which she is clearly intoxicated as justification for her taking Obumseli’s life two days later,” Handfield argued.
This level of back and forth in their relationship is displayed in an email she wrote to the staff at her building the next day after speaking to the officers. In it, she stated her boyfriend never physically touched her, and that he just would not leave her alone.
“He followed me into the elevator in the lobby and I put my hand up as [if] to say leave me alone. Nothing physical whatsoever,” she wrote in the correspondence. “A few minutes later, two front desk employees/security guards knocked on my door just before I was about to go to the pool.”
She said the staffers lied on her, claiming they saw her push Obumseli into the elevator. She attempted to correct them, even saying that he called the police on her. “This upset me because as I stated before, this was not a physical altercation and very quickly resolved. Lastly, he called police after I told him I didn’t want him to and there was no reason,” she continued.
Her lawyers said this was only Clenney protecting her lover as she had done many other times, “In her mind, it was that he, as a Black man, could be hurt or harmed if he was ever arrested by the police.”
While the note does not specify which elevator offense she was referring to, the prosecutor released a surveillance video of the couple within the three months they were living in the building, where she did push and hit him, physically assaulting him as alleged by the employee in her email.
For the death of Obumseli, Clenney is facing a second-degree murder charge and is expected in court in December.