Food firm distributor died of suffocation – Pathologist

Ademola Adedeji, a distributor with Rite Foods, who died on February 9, 2012, hours after being detained at the Ikeja Police Division, died of asphyxia (lack of oxygen), a post-mortem has revealed.

Ademola was arrested by the police after the company reported that he owed it some money and issued dud cheques to offset the debt.

The cause of the death of the 39-year-old had remained a mystery for over 10 months with his wife, Cecilia, accusing the police of complicity in his death. But the police insisted that they had no hand in it.

However, an Anatomic Pathologist at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital told an Ikeja District Coroner that Ademola “Died of suffocation as a result of inhalation of gas.”

The autopsy also revealed that the deceased had congestion in his liver and brain due to asphyxia.

The autopsy, which was tendered as ‘Exhibit E’ at the ongoing coroner’s inquest, further revealed an abrasion on the back of the deceased and a marked fluidity of blood which, is as a result of some form of asphyxiation.

At the inquest, where Francis Faduyile, who conducted the post-mortem testified, the police counsel was absent.

Under cross-examination by Clement Eko, counsel for the deceased’s family, Faduyile, who claimed to have been practicing medicine for over 15 years, stated that the late distributor had died before the police brought him to the hospital.

He said, “The (autopsy) report showed that he died of suffocation as a result of inhalation of gas or he was in a place that is highly congested and did not have enough oxygen. Abrasion is a light wound or peeling off of the top skin. But the marked fluidity of blood means that the blood did not clot at autopsy. There are so many things that can cause it, with asphyxia being one of the foremost.

“Naturally, when blood is let out of the vein or artery, it becomes solidified or clots. But in this case, there (was) no clot in the vessels after death. There are so many things that can cause fluidity. When a patient gets suffocated mechanically or through the inhalation of some gases, you can have that fluidity of blood.

“If it was mechanical, there are other small bones within the neck region that would be fractured. So, we ruled out mechanical.”

While cross-examining Cecilia in July, the police counsel, Cyril Ejiofor, had stated that Adedeji stayed alive for over one hour after he was rushed to the hospital before he died.

Ejiofor, also hinted that an autopsy report showed that the deceased suffered a cardiac arrest.

Some policemen, who had testified some months ago, had told the inquest that the police cell where Ademola was kept was airy and thinly populated.

One of them, Philomena Enwerem, had described the condition of the cell at Ikeja Police Division as “standard”.

The Coroner, Magistrate Tajudeen Elias, adjourned the inquest till December 21, 2012.