Nigerian man, Samuel Odupitan, convicted for murder after stabbing hotel worker in UK

A 24-year-old Nigerian, Samuel Odupitan, has been convicted of murder by a Croydon Crown Court in the United Kingdom, after he was found guilty of stabbing a hotel concierge worker to death while attempting to steal the victim’s Gucci bag.

Odupitan who was convicted on Wednesday, December 2, according to the BBC, stabbed Tyler Roye six times as he was making his way home after work in south London on February 26, 2020. He will be sentenced on December 7.

Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Odupitan had confronted Tyler on the tram and “murdered him in cold blood for the sake of a designer bag.”

Tyler, who worked at Holiday Inn in Stratford, reportedly left the tram in Woodside and had just picked up a call from his girlfriend when he was attacked by Odupitan who demanded his possessions, the prosecutors told the court.

“After a struggle, the 24-year-old defendant fled with the second-hand Bengal tiger print bag while Roye managed to make it to a friend’s house before collapsing inside,” they said.

Read also: Two men arrested for selling skulls of murdered policemen for N1000 in Ibadan

He was taken to hospital but died while receiving treatment.

Odupitan who lives in Croydon, was first spotted on CCTV, while analysis of his phone found numerous images of knives as well as a video of him driving around in a car armed with a blade.

He had also previously pleaded guilty to four counts of robbery and other crimes traced to him over a six months period.

Senior Crown prosecutor Devi Kharran said the stabbing of Tyler by Odupitan was an “opportunistic and unprovoked attack on a hardworking young man who was on his way home from work.”

Kharran added that Odupitan had “pursued” his victim from the moment he spotted him on the tram and Tyler “had lost his life simply because he had the fatal misfortune of encountering a violent robber on his way home.”

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