Weeks before a Black man was brutally stabbed to death by his white girlfriend, an OnlyFans model with more than 2 million followers on Instagram, he recorded an argument between the two where she repeatedly called him the “N-word.” Prosecutors secured the audio from his cell phone during an investigation of his death, saying this is more evidence that the accused murderer terrorized her lover and was out of control.
Nigerian American Christian Obumseli, 27, who was fatally stabbed by his partner Courtney Clenney, 26, in April of this year, recorded multiple sessions of his girlfriend’s violent outbursts on his phone, according to Fox News.
The recordings were released to the press by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office and are now considered evidence in the second-degree murder case against the young woman. According to Miami-Dade state attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, the couple was engaged in an “extremely tempestuous and combative” two-year romance.
In the audio, Clenney can be heard spewing the racial epithet at the young man, after he speaks to a girl while he was riding his bicycle. Obumseli pleads with her to accept his apology, saying he didn’t think to tell her because it was so casual of a greeting. The girlfriend is in a jealous rage, screaming at the top of her lungs, about him speaking to their mutual friend.
She screeches, “Man up, b##ch!” and threatens to assault him if he doesn’t help her look for her phone and charge it. Obumseli responds in disbelief and tries desperately to make sense of her chaotic rant.
“You know da-n well the right thing to do is tell me,” Clenney snapped.
“And I’m sorry,” Obumseli said, trying to calm her. But she interrupts him and says, “So, shut up and let me slap your dumb a##.”
As she continued to make him look for the phone, she yelled, “Find it and f##king charge it!”
“I don’t know where your phone is,” Obumseli said. “Why are you screaming, man?”
The girlfriend replied to his question, “Shut the f##k up!”
“I was on a bike ride, and she passed me and I said, hi,” Obumseli tells her. “That doesn’t mean you can call me a f##king [inaudible].”
In another phone recording, Clenney gets into a confrontation with the driver, exiting her car and yelling at the man. Obumseli can be heard telling this girlfriend to apologize to the man.
This enraged the social media influencer even more.
“You just told me to f##king apologize to a lowlife! You’re supposed to protect me! F##k you!” she shouted.
Within minutes, it seems as if Obumseli is being slapped and he yells out, “Stop hitting me!”
Police officers recovered the recordings from his phone after his murder on Sunday, April 3 in the couple’s luxury high-rise apartment on the 22nd floor. It was first released to the public by the Miami Herald and is now being used as evidence in the murder trial.
According to an autopsy report, Obumseli suffered a “stab wound to the chest… and that the knife punctured the subclavian artery.” What is in dispute is if he suffered the fatal stab wounds in a violent act of domestic abuse or in self-defense.
Clenney’s lawyers, Frank Prieto and Sabrina Puglisi, say the recording proves that the two were in a toxic relationship and still maintain their client is a domestic violence victim.
Prieto and Puglisi, according to the Daily Beast reiterate, “the evidence makes it very clear the two were in a toxic and dysfunctional relationship, from which Courtney had asked for help from both police and her family to leave.”
“She’s not going to trial for her lifestyle, her previous arguments, or recorded rants,” the attorneys say. “She is going to trial for defending herself against a violent struggle with her ex-boyfriend for which she feared for her life; Courtney is a victim of domestic abuse.”
The lawyers also point to bodycam footage from 48 hours before Obumseli’s death, showing how terrified Clenney was of her abusive boyfriend — calling him a stalker.
In the video she is pleading with law enforcement to protect her from him, claiming that even her mother was afraid to leave because of his aggressive and obsessive behavior.
Later, Clenney recants her story, the prosecution points out.
They have also, during the case, presented surveillance footage recorded months before from inside of an elevator. In this, Clenney is seen as the aggressor; she repeatedly hits Obumseli in an elevator. He tries in vain to restrain her, but is unsuccessful.
The prosecution would have the court believe this was the ebb and flow of their relationship, she would attack and he would then try to appease her.
The lawyer for the Obumseli family, Larry Handfield, says this is the hardest thing for his clients.
“I know it’s going to be very, very painful when [his relatives] hear this … I see it as a consistent pattern with someone who is unhinged and out of control,” Handfield said. He added, “She is the aggressor and abuser in this whole relationship.”
