After 27-year-old Christian Tobechukwu “Toby” Obumseli was stabbed to death on Sunday, April 3, his loved ones gathered at his parents’ house Tuesday, where his mother rolled on the floor, crying. “It was just a devastating time,” his friend Jessica Nwabuko, who was there, tells Rolling Stone. “Everybody was trying to support the mom.”
Grief and confusion run deep within Obumseli’s family and friends — as well as the public at large, who have received news of the man’s death and the circumstances surrounding it in spurts and rumors. We know, according to police, that he was stabbed to death on Sunday in a Miami luxury apartment building following a domestic dispute with his girlfriend, who called 911 to report the stabbing. The police have also said they detained that same girlfriend after the incident before she was “‘Baker Acted’ (taken to a mental institution),” a Miami Police spokesperson said in an email. And we know that police will not release her name, for reasons they won’t address.
Still, internet sleuths quickly figured out that the woman is a prominent OnlyFans model with 2 million followers on Instagram, Courtney Clenney, who goes by Courtney Tailor online. Nwabuko and her brother Christian also confirmed to Rolling Stone that Clenney was in a relationship with Obumseli. The Miami Police have declined to answer Rolling Stone’s questions about why the department has not identified Clenney publicly as the woman present at the scene of the stabbing, however.
“I just know that they’ve been dating on and off for a few years,” says Jessica, who is the goddaughter of Obumseli’s parents and describes him as her godbrother. She says their close-knit Nigerian family and friend group in Dallas, Texas, where Obumseli grew up, is still processing the loss.
According to a report by a local ABC affiliate, Clenney threatened to kill herself while detained at the police station; the Miami Police declined to confirm this to Rolling Stone, however. The same outlet also reported that the police had been called to disturbances at the couple’s apartment multiple times before the stabbing took place, which the Miami Police also declined to confirm. “We aren’t releasing any additional details as it pertains to this case,” a spokesperson said Friday. “It remains an active ongoing investigation.”
“We know that there was a physical altercation between them before he was stabbed,” the statement said. In a statement posted Thursday to Twitter, Miami Police refer to the events as a “domestic violence incident.”