Posted by By Tom Kelly on
A doctor was hacked to death by a Ghanian student whom she had treated like a son after discovering that he had failed his exams and faced deportation, a court has heard.
A doctor was hacked to death by a Ghanian student whom she had treated like a son after discovering that he had failed his exams and faced deportation, a court has heard.
Consultant paediatrician, Dr. Victoria Anyetei, was stabbed 56 times by David Quartey as she sat in her car on the driveway of the suburban home they shared, prosecutors allege.
The frenzied attack came days after she learnt that the 22-year-old, whose father is a high court judge in West Africa, had flunked his exams at Kensington Business College, and risked having his student visa revoked.
Under huge pressure to succeed academically, the normally ‘placid and likeable' young man snapped and went for Dr. Anyetei, as she left the home in Dartford, Kent, to start her commute to London's St. Thomas' Hospital, it was alleged.
Covering her mouth with his hand, he repeatedly stabbed her in the head, neck, body, arms and hands and bit her on the chin, Maidstone Crown Court was told. The force of the blows was so strong that it broke some of her ribs.
Dr. Anyetei desperately sounded the horn and revved the engine in an apparent attempt to raise the alarm, but her 20-year old son Andrew, who was sleeping in his bedroom a few feet away, did not hear the brutal assault.
Instead, her blood-splattered body lay undiscovered in the front seat of the Toyota Avensis, with the driver's door locked, for over two hours in the quiet cul de sac where she lived.
At one point, a neighbour and her young daughter passed by and saw her body but assumed the doctor was asleep.
Quartey eventually sounded the alarm after failing to lure Andrew onto the driveway by offering him a cigarette outside their home, so that he could stage a discovery, the court heard.
Ghana-born Dr. Anyetei, who was a British citizen, became friends with Quartey's parents after saving the life of another of their children before she moved to the UK in 1994.
When Quartey came to London to study in 2005, she allowed him to stay at her home in Dartford, Kent, where she acted as his guardian and he called her ‘mum.'
But tensions emerged in their relationship after she found out he had lied to her about passing his end of year exams in the summer 2006.
She later wrote to his parents in Ghana explaining that the discovery had been the ‘shock of my life.'
The following year, he failed another three exams which put at risk, his student visa which had only just been extended.
Again, he lied to Dr. Anyetei and claimed that he had not yet received the results. But four days before the attack, after growing suspicious, she checked with the college who told him that he had failed again. Prosecutor Anthony Haycroft said: 'He lied to Dr. Anyetei about his studies. 'We say matters came to a head when she found out the truth and it was on that Tuesday, 14 August, 2007 that we say he snapped and lost control."
Mr. Haycroft said Quartey was under tremendous cultural and family pressure to succeed academically. He hoped to do law at university after completing the foundation course at the Kensington College, which cost his parents £14,000 a year.
The prosecutor said that although the murder weapon was never found, there was a ‘powerful' circumstantial evidence linking him to the murder. On the morning of the attack, Dr. Anyetei had told her son that Quartey was ‘scaring her,' he said. Quartey was also due to be with Dr. Anyetei at the ‘exact' time of her death as she wanted to take him to London to make sure he attended college to revise for resits. The student suffered a suspected bite injury to his right index finger the morning of the murder, which was caused during the struggle with the doctor, it was claimed.
One of her teeth was found in the back of her car by police with Quartey's DNA on it, allegedly after coming off as he tried to put his hand over her mouth as he stabbed her. The student's DNA was found mixed with the victim's blood in the roof lining of her car, the court heard. A devout Christian, Dr. Anyetei was separated from her lawyer husband, the father of her only child. Quartey denies murder.