By admin An OnlyFans model who stabbed her boyfriend to death inside a luxury Miami high-rise will serve about two years in prison, and she won’t be able to profit from the saga.
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Courtney Clenney — sandwiched between her attorneys and wearing an orange jail attire — on Monday pleaded guilty to manslaughter, a charge lesser than second-degree murder. Earlier this year, a civil suit filed against Clenney was settled.
The 30-year-old woman was accused of killing her boyfriend Christian Obumseli, 27, on April 3, 2022, inside One Paraiso, a condo complex at 3100 NE Seventh Ave. in Edgewater.
The plea was the result of a deal Clenney and her legal team struck with prosecutors. Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Andrea Ricker Wolfson sentenced Clenney to six years in prison followed by five years on probation, as per the negotiated agreement.
Clenney will receive credit for the nearly four years she served in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center. While on probation, Clenney will have to complete a mental health and substance abuse evaluation as well as any necessary treatment.
Clenney — an OnlyFans model who at one point boasted more than 2 million followers — has been jailed since August 2022. She was arrested in Hawaii four months after, police say, she stabbed Obumseli in the chest. Evidence from the case detailed a tumultuous relationship between the jet-setting couple. The couple started dating in 2020 and had a history of domestic violence.
She closed her eyes as prosecutor Shawn Abuhoff said she was admitting that she caused Obumseli’s fatal stab wound. Although not part of the plea agreement, Abuhoff said a state law bars Clenney from financially benefit from the killing.
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“Today closes a legal chapter, but it certainly doesn’t close our grief,” Obumseli’s cousin Karen Egbuna said as she read out a letter written by his mother. “No sentence, no plea, can bring back my son to me.”
Egbuna was surrounded by several of Obumseli’s loved ones, including his mother, as she addressed the court. Several of members of the Obumseli family embraced. One held a photo collage of Obumseli, and many wore purple ribbons, which symbolize domestic violence awareness.
Obumseli’s mother, Egbuna said, was called by doctors while she was at work the day he died. They asked for consent to donate his eyes — and that’s how she learned Obumseli had been killed by someone he “had trusted and loved.”
Using her cuffed hands, Clenney wiped her eyes with tissues as the family spoke.
“Four years later, there are still nights where I cannot sleep,” the letter said. “There are moments that I go back to the last moments of Christian’s life.”
In the letter, Obumseli’s mother said the family has mourned the birthdays, holidays and mundane conversations they will never again have with Obumseli.
“He was a son. He was a brother. He was a cousin. He was a nephew. He was a grandson. He was a friend to a lot of people,” Egbuna read. “He was loved… The loss of Christian did not end on April 3, 2022. We carry it with us every day.”
All that the family has left, Egbuna read from the letter, are the memories of Obumseli. In her penned address, Chio Obumseli recalled how her son, as a child, once encouraged her to help a homeless man.
“Those are the memories that no one can ever take from us,” the letter said. “Nothing can erase the pain of the day I buried my son. Nothing can describe what it feels like to stand at the grave of your child.”
Family sought accountability
The Obumseli family, attorney Larry Handfield said, approved of the plea so they could focus on closure. But they also wanted the justice system to recognize that the killing was not an accident or an act of self-defense.
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“What the family wanted was accountability,” Handfield said. “At least today we received that.”
The killing also took the Obumseli family to civil court. In 2023, the family sued Clenney, One Paraiso Condominium Association, as well as property’s management, owner and security services. The wrongful-death case was settled in May, court records show. No financial terms of the settlement are in the court records.
In a statement, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said Obumseli’s family finally heard Clenney “accepting full responsibility for his death.”
“While nothing can heal the wounds caused on that day in April, I hope today’s guilty plea brings his family a measure of justice too long denied,” the statement said.
Obumseli, Handfield said, was a loving, compassionate person. And although he had been attacked by Clenney before his killing, he didn’t call law enforcement because he loved her.
“He was blinded by that love. That’s why he predicted that it would be love that would take his life,” Handfield said, referring to a text Obumseli had sent Clenney.
Clenney was fingerprinted as Obumseli’s family shuffled out of the courtroom. She waved to her parents before she was escorted out by a corrections officer.
Clenney closed her eyes Monday as prosecutor Shawn Abuhoff said she was admitting that she caused Obumseli’s fatal stab wound. Although not part of the plea agreement, Abuhoff said a state law bars Clenney from financially benefit from the killing.
A cold killing or self-defense?
Defense attorneys argued that Clenney — who was in a tumultuous, toxic relationship with Obumseli — was a victim of battered women’s syndrome and was “forced to take action in the defense of her life.” Clenney called 911 immediately instead of letting her boyfriend bleed out, which the attorney claims supports Clenney being charged with manslaughter instead of second-degree murder.
Clenney claimed to have thrown the knife at Obumseli from a distance of over 10 feet, but prosecutors say an autopsy revealed a puncture wound so deep it could only have been caused by an up-close and personal stabbing.
Evidence of the unstable relationship was captured on surveillance footage — and audio recorded by Obumseli.
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Two months before Obumseli was killed, Clenney attacked him in an elevator. As Clenney became enraged, Obumseli threw his hands up in defense, and Clenney continued swinging on him, the video showed.
During the less than a minute-long elevator ride, Obumseli attempted to block Clenney as she hit him repeatedly, according to the video. Clenney slapped and pushed Obumseli as he walked out of the elevator.
Obumseli chronicled their arguments in a series of recordings, which caught Clenney angrily screaming, berating and cursing him out using racist slurs. In one of the audio files, Clenney appears to be enraged because he didn’t tell her that he said hello to a female acquaintance while on a bicycle ride. Clenney calls Obumseli the n-word multiple times, and tells him to “man up b—-” and to “shut up and let me slap you, dumb a–!”
Clenney’s defense team tried to get those audio recordings thrown out, arguing they were inadmissible evidence because they were taken while Clenney was in private, in her home, and have no relevance to the crime.
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