By Ghazali Ibrahim
A 40-year-old social worker, Adedapo Adegbola, has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 25 years after murdering a young colleague who had ended their brief relationship.
Adegbola fatally stabbed 23-year-old Stephanie Irons in the neck at her home in Mapperley, Nottinghamshire, on the evening of 21 October. Nottingham Crown Court heard that the killing was premeditated, driven by obsession and an inability to accept the end of the relationship.
The court was told that Adegbola and Irons met at work and briefly dated, but she ended the relationship after becoming distressed by his controlling behaviour. Prosecutors said Adegbola became fixated on her and planned her murder days in advance.
On 15 October, he bought two knives with the intention to kill. Six days later, after finishing work, he travelled by taxi to Irons’s flat on Westdale Lane West, arriving shortly after she got home. He entered the property without her knowledge and remained inside for nearly two hours.
During the attack, Irons suffered several knife wounds, including the fatal injury to her neck. Prosecutors said Adegbola then sat on the sofa as she lay dead or dying, before taking her phone and keys, locking the flat and fleeing the scene. He later disposed of his clothes and the murder weapon.
In a disturbing detail revealed in court, Adegbola sent screenshots of sexually explicit messages from Irons’s phone to their colleagues, believed to have been done after he had killed her.
Concerned by her silence, two colleagues went to Irons’s home later that night. When there was no response, police were called. Officers eventually entered the flat through a rear window and found her lying on the floor, surrounded by blood.
Passing sentence, Judge Nirmal Shant KC said Adegbola was unwilling to accept that the relationship had ended and acted out of control and entitlement. “What you didb: was to take the life of a compassionate, accomplished young woman whose only fault was to have loved you at one time,” the judge said.
Irons’s mother gave a heartbreaking statement in court, describing her daughter as compassionate, caring and full of life. “She lit up the room and could make even the saddest person smile,” she said, adding that her daughter wanted to make the world kinder.
Adegbola wept as the statement was read. He later handed himself in to police on 22 October after fleeing to Hull and pleaded guilty to murder in January.
Detective Inspector Stuart Barson, the senior investigating officer, praised the strength of Irons’s family, describing the killing as a “senseless act” that had devastated many lives. At the family’s request, several police officers attended the sentencing, allowing Irons’s mother, a former officer, to thank them personally.
Meanwhile, police confirmed that a 40-year-old woman, Mary Onolunosen, has been charged with assisting an offender in connection with the case. She is expected to appear at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court on 6 March.
