The 911 call is painful to hear: Miami Only Fans model Courtney Clenney, over the sound of a barking dog, frantically cries for help as her friend is mortally wounded, with a stab wound to his torso.
‘I can’t feel my arm. I can’t feel my arm,” you hear Christan “Toby” Obumseli say calmly.
“My friend dies of a stab wound!” Clenney cries. “Honey, I’m so sorry!”
It was not mentioned during the call that Clenney was the one who stabbed Obumseli, who would later die from a single knife wound to the heart. Prosecutors released the 911 call this week, as well as police body camera footage of officers speaking to Clenney during a housebreaking call at the Edgewaters’ luxury high-rise apartment days before the murder.
Clenney, 26, is charged with second-degree murder with a deadly weapon for the fatal stabbing of Obumseli on April 3, 2022. Prosecutors say Obumseli was unarmed and that she was an aggressor. She claims self-defense – her defense team insists she, not Obumseli, was a victim of domestic violence.
Attorney Larry Handfield, who represents the Obumseli family, says the 911 call speaks for itself.
“It shows her state of mind. She says she’s sorry because she realizes what she’s done,” Handfield said. “She doesn’t say, ‘I defended myself.'”
Clenney’s attorney, Sabrina Puglisi, said that the audio shows put her in a situation she didn’t want to be in. “This isn’t someone who stabbed someone and didn’t care. You can clearly tell from her emotions that she’s asking someone to come and help quickly,” Puglisi said.
Global attention
The murder case has received media attention around the world, in part because Clenney led such a public life, with millions of followers on social media. She regularly posted spicy photos of herself on Instagram, and on OnlyFans, a site where artists often post content for money.
Clenney and Obumseli had a notoriously stormy, on-again, off-again relationship. They had only been living in Miami since January and rented a luxury three-bedroom apartment on the 22nd floor of One Paraiso. Their arguments were loud and very public – so many neighbors complained about the noise that the building was moving to evict them from the unit.
That night of April 1 and early April 2, Miami police officers were called to the apartment and Clenney appeared “intoxicated,” according to police reports.
Clenney, in the lobby of the building, is recorded complaining that she broke up with Obumseli and that he “stalked” her, sleeping in an elevator entrance to her apartment.
“I want a restraining order against Christian Obumseli. I mean it. Where can I do that? How can I make myself first? Because I know him and I know he will,” Clenney says.
One of the Miami police officers repeatedly explains that she has to go to court for a restraining order and that the police cannot issue Obumseli because he legally lives in her unit.
“I haven’t always been the victim, but like now I’m the victim in this situation,” she says.
Her lawyer, Sabrina Puglisi, insists the video illustrates that she is a victim of domestic violence. “It’s very clear from the video that she looks angry. She’s emotional. She is crying. She is upset that she can’t even walk her dogs all day for fear of being followed by Obumseli,” said Puglisi, who represents her along with Frank Prieto.
But Handfield, Obumseli’s family’s lawyer, said the disruption, less than 48 hours before the murder, was irrelevant because Obumseli was never arrested and “everyone knew they were in an on-again, off-again relationship”. He pointed out that Clenney was arrested last year after Obumseli told police in Las Vegas that she threw a glass at him in their hotel room.
“There’s a pattern when she drinks, she becomes a different person. What the defense is trying to do is try to use an incident where she was clearly drunk as a justification for taking Obumseli’s life two days later,” Handfield said.
The body-camera footage also shows a building manager describing how Obumseli “attacked” her before police arrived at the apartment entrance. But Clenney took offense at that description in an April 2 email to building management.
“He followed me to the elevator in the lobby and I raised my hand as… [if] to say leave me alone. Nothing physical whatsoever,” she wrote. “A few minutes later, two front desk clerks/guards knocked on my door just before I was about to go to the pool.”
She accused the employees of making false claims that she pushed Obumseli into the elevator. “This upset me because, as I said before, this was not a physical altercation and was resolved very quickly,” she wrote.
“Finally, he called the police after I told him I didn’t want to and there was no reason,” she added, complaining about one of the employees.
Puglisi, the defense attorney, claimed that Clenney would “constantly protect” Obumseli, even though she was the victim.
“In her mind it was that, as a black man, he could be injured if he were ever arrested by the police,” she said.
