The Court of Appeal sitting in Akure, the Ondo State capital has upheld the death sentence of a popular hotel owner, Ramon Adedoyin, who was found guilty in the murder case of an ex-Master’s student of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Timothy Adegoke.
According to the court’s judgment on Thursday, the appellate court noted that the judgment by the Osun State High Court which sentenced Adedoyin to death stands.
The appeal court had reserved judgment on October 29, 2024
The judgment read in parts, “The judgment of the High Court of Ọ̀ṣun State stands. Adedoyin’s appeal is dismissed in part. The Court of Appeal held that Adedoyin was properly convicted and sentenced to death.”
It further noted that the “Order of forfeiture of Hilton Hotel quashed and set aside. Order of education scholarship to children of Timothy Adegoke by Adedoyin and others quashed and set aside.”
Adegoke was found dead in November 2021 at Adedoyin’s Hilton Honours Hotel, Ile-Ife, where he (the deceased) had lodged.
On January 29, 2022, the late 37-year-old Master of Business Administration student was buried beside the house he built for his parents in the New Eruwa part of Eruwa town, the Ibarapa East Local Government Area of Oyo State.
He was mourned by family members, friends and beneficiaries.
His widow, Bolatito, wept uncontrollably and refused to leave the graveside despite pleas that she should step aside.
In March same year, Afeez Olaniyan, the Investigative Police Officer who undertook the first probe into Adegoke’s death, narrated how some defendants arraigned in connection with the deceased’s death, evacuated and dumped his (Adegoke’s) corpse in the bush.
Olaniyan, who was led in evidence by the prosecution’s attorney, M. Omosun, during the trial’s continuation, stated that according to a statement taken from two Hilton Hotel employees, Adeniyi Aderogba and Oyetunde Kazeem, the late Adegoke’s body was covered with a duvet and transported in a Hilux van driven by Roheem Adedoyin, the hotel owner’s son, to a landfill.
According to Dr. Waheed Oluogun, a consultant pathologist at the Osun State University Teaching Hospital in Osogbo, Adegoke’s death resulted from a massive hemorrhage brought on by a serious traumatic injury.
