‘Baby I’m sorry.’ 911 call, police video released in case of Miami model charged in murder
The 911 name is painful to listen to: Miami Solely Followers mannequin Courtney Clenney, over the sound of a barking canine, frantically summons assist as her boyfriend lays mortally wounded, a stab wound to his torso.
“I can’t really feel my arm. I can’t my really feel my arm,” Christan “Toby” Obumseli could be heard saying calmly.
“My boyfriend is dying of a stab wound!” Clenney cries. “Child, I’m so sorry!”
Unsaid on the decision was that Clenney was the one who stabbed Obumseli, who would later die of a single knife wound to the guts. Prosecutors this week launched the 911 name, in addition to police body-cam footage of cops chatting with Clenney days earlier than the killing throughout a domestic-disturbance name on the couple’s luxurious high-rise Edgewater residence.
Clenney, 26, is charged with second-degree homicide with a lethal weapon for fatally stabbing Obumseli on April 3, 2022. Prosecutors say Obumseli was unarmed, and that she was aggressor. She is claiming self-defense — her protection group insists she, not Obumseli, was the sufferer of home violence.
Legal professional Larry Handfield, who represents the Obumseli household, says the 911 name speaks for itself.
“It exhibits her frame of mind. She’s saying she’s sorry as a result of she’s realizing what she’s carried out,” Handfield stated. “She’s not saying, ‘I used to be defending myself.’”
Clenney’s protection lawyer, Sabrina Puglisi, stated the audio exhibits she was put right into a state of affairs she didn’t wish to be in. “This isn’t somebody that stabbed anyone and didn’t care. Clearly, you possibly can hear from her feelings she’s asking for anyone to come back rapidly to assist,” Puglisi stated.
Worldwide consideration
The homicide case has garnered media consideration the world over, partially as a result of Clenney lived such a public life, with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. On Instagram, she recurrently posted racy pictures of herself, and on OnlyFans, a website the place performers usually publish content material for cash.
Clenney and Obumseli had a notoriously stormy on-again-off-again relationship. They’d solely lived in Miami since January, renting a luxurious 3-bedroom residence on the twenty second story of One Paraiso. Their arguments had been loud and really public — so many neighbors complained concerning the noise that the constructing was transferring to evict them from the unit.
That night time of April 1 and early into April 2, Miami cops had been referred to as to the residence and Clenney “appeared intoxicated,” in line with police stories.
Clenney, within the foyer of the constructing, is recorded complaining that she broke up with Obumseli and he’d been “stalking her,” sleeping in an elevator entrance method in entrance of her residence.
“I desire a restraining order in opposition to Christian Obumseli. I’m severe. The place can I do this? How can I make myself first? ‘Trigger I do know him and I do know he’ll do it,” Clenney says.
One of many Miami cops repeatedly explains that she has to go to court docket for a restraining order, and that police can not problem a trespassing warning to Obumseli as a result of he legally lives within the unit together with her.
“I’ve not all the time been a sufferer, however like proper now I’m the sufferer on this state of affairs,” she says.
Her protection lawyer, Sabrina Puglisi, insists that the video illustrates that she is a domestic-abuse sufferer. “It’s very clear from the video she appears upset. She’s emotional. She’s crying. She’s upset that she will’t even stroll her canine all day for concern of being adopted by Obumseli,” stated Puglisi, who’s representing her together with Frank Prieto.
However Handfield, the lawyer for Obumseli’s household, stated the disturbance, lower than 48 hours earlier than the killing, wasn’t related as a result of Obumseli was by no means arrested and “everybody knew they’d an on-again off once more relationship.” He identified that Clenney had been arrested the earlier yr after Obumseli instructed police in Las Vegas that she threw a glass at him of their lodge room.
“There’s a sample when she drinks, she turns into as completely different particular person. What the protection is looking for to do is to attempt use an incident through which she is clearly intoxicated as justification for her taking Obumseli’s life two days later,” Handfield stated.
The body-camera footage additionally exhibits a constructing supervisor describing how Obumseli “charged” at her earlier than police arrived within the entrance option to the residence. However Clenney, in an April 2 e-mail to the constructing administration, took umbrage with that description.
“He adopted me into the elevator within the foyer and I put my hand up as [if] to say depart me alone. Nothing bodily in any respect,” she wrote. “A couple of minutes later, two entrance desk workers/safety guards knocked on my door simply earlier than I used to be about to go to the pool.”
She accused the workers of falsely claiming she’d shoved Obumseli into the elevator. “This upset me as a result of as I acknowledged earlier than, this was not a bodily altercation and really rapidly resolved,” she wrote.
“Lastly, he referred to as police after I instructed him I didn’t need him to and there was no motive,” she added, complaining concerning the one of many workers.
Puglisi, the protection lawyer, claimed Clenney would “always shield” Obumseli, regardless that she was the sufferer.
“In her thoughts, it was that he, as a Black man, may very well be harm or harmed if he was ever arrested by the police,” she stated.
