Before the morning of March 5, 2018, Lydiah Okongo had already told police she was afraid. The 40-year-old Kenyan paediatric home-care nurse had reported that her husband, Henry Okongo, allegedly threatened to kill her and "send her back to Kenya in a coffin." Her death in their Jersey City home came after that warning, not out of nowhere.
To outsiders, the picture looked very different. Henry, 51, had lived in the US for nearly two decades and reportedly owned laundromats and properties in the neighbourhood. Neighbours described the couple positively. Church elders later gave a different account, saying the marriage was marked by frequent separations and tensions.
Lydiah was found with multiple gunshot wounds to the head and torso at the family home at 2 Mina Drive. Henry was found in the basement with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Both were pronounced dead at the scene. The alarm was raised only after she failed to arrive for a scheduled home visit, prompting her manager to request a welfare check.
The story's closing point is the one that matters most here: serious threats can stay hidden behind an outward appearance of a stable family life, and in this case the threat had been spoken aloud and reported before it was carried out.

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