Elevator video to be used as evidence against Courtney Clenney, social media model charged in boyfriend's death
An evidentiary hearing was held Tuesday ahead of the trial of a social media model accused of murdering her boyfriend in a luxury Florida condo, CBS Miami reported.
Courtney Clenney, 26, is charged with second-degree murder with a deadly weapon in the stabbing death of Christian Toby Obumseli at One Paraiso back in April of this year.
Clenney, who was arrested last month in Hawaii, has pleaded not guilty.
She uses the name Courtney Tailor on Instagram and OnlyFans, where she has more than 2 million followers.
During Tuesday's hearing, prosecutors presented the evidence they will against Clenney. It includes crime scene photos, the murder weapon, and the timeline before and after she stabbed Obumseli.
Prosecutors also want to introduce an elevator video that shows Clenney and Obumseli two months before his death. Video from a building elevator in February 2022 appeared to show Clenney shoving and hitting Obumseli. According to the arrest warrant, she had also been charged with domestic battery against Obumseli in a hotel in Las Vegas in July 2021.
Clenney's attorney, Frank Prieto, asked the judge to limit the amount of evidence because said her case has gained so much publicity that releasing any more evidence could make jury selection a complicated process.
He said the State Attorney's Office has thousands of photos, audio, and content from her social media pages as well as more than 12,000 text messages between her and Obumseli. He believes much of this evidence isn't relative to the case.
"To vigorously defend my client, I'm not going to stand back and let her be a punching bag for the media," said Prieto. "This case needs to be tried in this courtroom with the protections of a fair and impartial trial."
Clenney, who was handcuffed and dressed in an orange jumpsuit, shook her head as a judge denied the motion to limit the evidence shared.
When announcing the charges against Clenney last month, Miami State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said that security staff at the building documented "many instances" of loud arguments between the pair after they moved into the apartment in January 2022, adding that tenants as far as two floors above the apartment had complained to the building about the noise.
On the day of Obumseli's death, he left the apartment at 1:15 p.m. and returned at 4:33 p.m. with sandwiches for the pair, Rundle said. Clenney called her mother at 4:43 and spoke for six minutes, and called her again at 4:49 and spoke for seven minutes, Rundle said. At 4:57, she called 911 to report that Obumseli had been stabbed. During that time, neighbors called the building about a disturbance and security also called 911, Rundle said.
Rundle said Obumseli can be heard saying that he was dying and losing feeling in his arm on her 911 call, and that Clenney was heard saying "I'm so sorry." When police arrived, Clenney was cradling Obumseli's body, according to her arrest warrant. He later died of his injuries at the hospital.
Clenney later told police she had stabbed Obumseli after he grabbed her by the throat and shoved her against the wall, Rundle said. She allegedly said she ran to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and threw it at him from about 10 feet away.
But Rundle said police did not find any evidence that Clenney had been harmed and said the medical examiner disputed her account of the incident, noting that Obumseli's injury was much more consistent with a "downward strike" with the knife than with a throw from such a far distance.
Rundle said the chief medical examiner for Miami-Dade County determined that Obumseli was killed by a three-inch deep stab wound to the chest.
"The violent and toxic two-year relationship of Christian Obumseli and Courtney Clenney did not have to end in tragedy with Christian's murder as a victim of domestic violence," Rundle said.
