MIAMI — After OnlyFans model Courtney Clenney fatally stabbed her unarmed boyfriend during a raging domestic dispute in their luxury Miami apartment, police say, she claimed that she’d merely thrown the knife at him, at a distance of more than 10 feet.
But investigators say that Christian Obumseli’s chest wound — slightly downward, penetrating eight centimeters — was just too deep to have been caused by a blade hurled from across the room.
The stabbing, they say, was up close and personal.
The medical evidence, along with Clenney’s history of attacking her boyfriend with weapons during an increasingly stormy relationship, was what spurred Miami-Dade prosecutors to charge her with murder, according to an arrest warrant released on Thursday.
State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle revealed the evidence on Thursday afternoon, depicting the 26-year-old model as the unhinged aggressor. Prosecutors even played a video of Clenney repeatedly attacking her boyfriend in an elevator two months before the killing.
“The violent and toxic two-year relationship of Christian Obumbeli and Courtney Clenney did not have to end in tragedy with Christian’s murder as a victim of domestic violence,” she said.
The arrest warrant for Clenney was unsealed Thursday, one day after U.S. marshals arrested her in Hawaii, where she was enrolled in a substance abuse rehabilitation program. Her defense attorney, Frank Prieto, has long said it was Clenney who was the victim of domestic abuse and that she acted in self-defense.
“We look forward to clearing her name in court,” he told The Miami Herald shortly after her arrest in Hawaii.
Clenney and Obumseli had only lived in Miami since January, renting a luxury 3-bedroom apartment on the 22nd story of One Paraiso, a high-rise in the hip Edgewater neighborhood. 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.
It was a familiar pattern.
In January 2021, police at the Cosmopolitan casino in Las Vegas responded to the couple’s room after the two got into loud argument. Obumseli told officers that he was “frustrated because they didn’t get to enjoy Las Vegas since all they did was drink and sleep.” When he refused to go to bed, Clenney threw a glass at him “and barely missed him as he was laying on the couch.”
“Courtney said that she had thrown items at him in the past like plates and glasses,” according to the Las Vegas police report. She was arrested on a charge of domestic battery. The disposition of the case remains unclear.
The two lived in Austin, Texas, where police and neighbors reported disturbances. Aidan Nevisky, who lived on a floor below Clenney at a riverside condo building, recalled frequently hearing the couple arguing several years ago.
“You could hear her throwing glasses, smashing objects,” Nevisky told the Herald. “Everyone on the 10th and 11th floors could hear them. They were not quiet.”
Nevisky recalled during one argument, Clenney apparently flung a painting off the balcony. It blew onto his balcony. “It was huge. It was a giant painting of a tiger,” he said.
In December 2021, police officers responding to a trespassing report at a different building where the couple lived and found “clothing, shoes and bags scattered on the lawn” and heard the sounds of a man and woman arguing, according to a police report.
Clenney and Obumseli told officers that they were moving to Florida, and were “arguing because they are unsure if they will continue to date once they moved there.” The situation cooled off and no one was arrested.
“There was a history of her always being aggressive and violent,” said Larry Handfield, a Miami lawyer who is representing Obumseli’s family.
In Miami — where Clenney worked as a social-media personality, Obumseli in cryptocurrency — the domestic strife continued.
In February 2022, two months before the killing, elevator surveillance video showed Obumseli and Clenney getting into an elevator, and her pounding the touch screen in anger, then slapping and hitting him, and grabbing his hair before he tries to block her strikes. She continues to attack him, as he pushes her away and walks out of the elevator. She storms after him.
According to an arrest warrant, they broke up several times while in Miami, including during the last week of March, when Clenney booted him from the apartment. Her mother, Deborah Clenney, came to town to stay with her. After she left, the couple “rekindled their relationship” on April 1, with him moving back in.
“Arguments began almost immediately,” according to the arrest warrant by Miami Detective Yermaine Briceno and prosecutor Khalil Quinan.
That night of April 1, Miami police officers were called to the apartment and Clenney “appeared intoxicated.” No arrests were made.
On Sunday, April 3, according to the arrest warrant, the day “began peacefully” with the couple playing with their dogs in the apartment. Obumseli later went to Subway to get sandwiches. He left at 1:15 p.m. and returned at 4:32 p.m., according to building records.
Clenney had just finishing uploading a video to Instagram. Prosecutors believe the stabbing happened sometime during a 13-minute span shortly after he returned, as she was making phone calls with her mother.
Deborah Clenney told police that she heard her daughter arguing with Obumseli, saying he was “lying.” Finally, at 4:57 p.m., Clenney called 911 to say Obumseli had been stabbed. “On that call, the victim can be heard in the background repeatedly saying he is dying and cannot feel his arm,” the warrant said. “The defendant is also heard saying, ‘I’m so sorry baby.’”
“The amount of blood throughout the condominium at different levels, including two large pools, evidences the victim was bleeding for an extended period before police arrived,” the warrant said.
After the 911 call, the warrant said, Clenney’s mother sent a text that mentioned “self-defense” and “advised her to not say anything to investigators without an attorney.”
But Clenney did speak to police investigators, claiming she grabbed a knife because Obumseli shoved her against the wall by the neck and he threw her to the ground, “but then allowed her to get up.”
Detectives noted that Clenney showed no injuries and “at no time did (she) claim the victim was armed with any type of weapon,” according to the warrant.
As for the throwing of the knife, Chief Medical Examiner Kenneth Hutchins told investigators that the story was implausible. “I do not think that this was ... I don’t know. I really don’t know if this was justified at all,” Clenney told police detectives when asked to explain the killing.
