The Nigerian lecturer, Marinus Chijioke Iwuchukwu, was found dead in his home in the United states on January 17, 2023, and his colleagues and friends are mourning his passing.
After an alleged “domestic disturbance” at around 10 am on Tuesday, January 17, 2023, the Allegheny County Police in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, received a call from a “yet to be identified person” asking them to check on Marinus Iwuchukwu and a woman identified as Charce Dunn’s welfare.
A SWAT team that entered the house afterwards discovered Iwuchukwu, and the wife dead.
Iwuchukwu,59 ,a scholar of Nigerian descent, worked as an associate professor of theology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, USA, before he passed away.
Iwuchukwu was born in Nigeria and brought up as a Catholic in Kano, a Northern Nigerian State where Islam is the dominant religion.
He attended primary and secondary schools in Northern Nigeria before being accepted to the University of Ibadan in the country’s southwest, where he earned a diploma in religious studies.
Iwuchukwu returned to Nigeria in 1999 after earning a bachelor’s degree from Urbanian University in Rome, Italy. He then changed careers by enrolling at the Media Service Centre in Kaduna in 1992.
He received his Post-Graduate Diploma in Education from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, four years later while already lecturing at the Federal College of Education in Kano.
Iwuchukwu pursued a Master’s degree in Religious Journalism at Marquette University in the United States, combining his media and religious training.
He began his full-time teaching career at the Faculty of Theology Department, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in August 2008, where he taught Judaism, Christianity and Islam , Building Bridges: Inclusive Religious Pluralism and Dialogue , among other subjects, in his quest to find answers to religious-related violence, help different religious adherers become more interactive and stop “all unnecessary conflicts.”
Iwuchukwu passed away as a result of homicide, Lieutenant Venerando Costa of the Allegheny County Police informed Neusroom on Wednesday, January 18, 2023.
Costa said in an email sent to Neusroom, ““Cause of (Iwuchukwu’s) death was mass bleeding from stab wounds to the arm and leg.”
His passing came four years after Victoria Popvrako, a 36-year-old mother of two, is suspected of murdering Gbolade Ejemai, a 30-year-old Nigerian medical student. After a violent dispute, Popvrako, who was dating Ejemai, allegedly conspired with his father to kill the man.
Gabriel Welsch, a spokesman for Duquesne Catholic University, responded to Iwuchukwu’s passing as follows:
“This is a tragedy for all involved and our thoughts and prayers are with Professor Iwuchukwu’s colleagues, students, friends, and loved ones.”