New photos have been released of bruising on social media model Courtney Clenney, the woman accused of killing her boyfriend in April in Miami. NBC 6’s Alyssa Hyman reports.
A social media model accused of fatally stabbing her boyfriend in their luxury Miami condo sports bruises throughout her body in newly released photos.
The photos of Courtney Clenney were from after the fatal April 3 stabbing of her boyfriend, Christian Obumseli, and were released by prosecutors Wednesday after a records request by NBC 6.
Defense attorneys previously said the photos, allegedly taken a few days after the killing and by Clenney's mother, support their argument that the stabbing was self-defense. But at the time charges were announced prosecutors said Clenney gave inconsistent accounts of the incident.
Clenney, 26, is facing a second-degree murder charge in the stabbing of the 27-year-old Obumseli. Clenney, who went by the name Courtney Tailor on social media including OnlyFans, has more than 2 million Instagram followers.
COURTNEY CLENNEY CASE
Miami-Dade prosecutors said the two had been "involved in an extremely tempestuous and combative relationship" that culminated in the April 3 stabbing in their unit at the One Paraiso condo building on Northeast 7th Avenue in Edgewater.
Previously released photos showed the bloody crime scene investigators found in the apartment. They also showed Clenney's body covered in Obumseli's blood.
Prosecutors said that Obumseli was the victim of domestic violence, but Clenney's attorneys have said she was the victim of an abusive relationship and that she stabbed him in self-defense.
Text messages Obumseli sent Clenney months before the stabbing had him questioning, "Is love going to kill me?" He also mentions her stabbing him in the leg.
"This crazy thing about all of this is that yesterday when you (expletive) stabbed me in the (expletive) leg and you saw how (expletive) bad it was hurting me and I couldn't (expletive) walk I couldn't do (expletive) and you were telling me I wish I could take your pain away I wish it was me and not you," he wrote.
In phone recordings released last week and made some time before the stabbing, Clenney could be heard screaming and cursing at Obumseli and using racial slurs.
"Decide whether or not you're done gaslighting me," Clenney told Obumseli in one of the recordings.
"Courtney, that’s a f---ing threat," Obumseli responds. "I apologized but you hit me."
"Shut the f--- up b----," Clenney whispers back.
In another recording, Clenney calls Obumseli, who was Black, the n-word multiple times, and tells him to "man up b----."
Clenney seemed to be angry over the fact Obumseli said hello to another woman on a bike ride and didn't tell her about it afterwards.
"Shut up and let me slap you, dumb a--!" she later says in the recording, then yells at him to find her phone. "Find my f------ phone and charge it!"
The release of the recordings came after the release of a Miami Police bodycam video that shows officers responding to the condo building after a reported domestic dispute between Clenney and Obumseli just two days before the stabbing.
Clenney could be heard saying she wants a restraining order against Obumseli.
"How can I make myself first because I know him and he would do it," she tells the officers. "I have not always been the victim but right now I'm a freakin' victim, I'm scared to walk my dogs."
At a news conference shortly after Clenney's arrest, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle showed surveillance footage of the couple engaged in a violent encounter in the building's elevator on Feb. 21, about a month after they moved in.
"It certainly appears that the defendant was aggressively attacking Christian," Fernandez Rundle said.
Clenney remains behind bars without bond in Miami-Dade. A hearing will be held in the coming days as defense attorneys seek to have Clenney released from jail while she awaits trial.
