After a young Nigerian woman, Naomi Oni’s face was left severely scarred by acid thrown on her in east London in December, police have charged another Nigerian woman, Mary Konye, over the incident.
Naomi Oni, 21, was partially blinded and needed skin grafts after acid was thrown on her by a person wearing a veil after the Victoria’s Secret shop assistant got off a bus on Lodge Avenue in Dagenham, east London in the early hours of December 30.
Mary Konye, a Nigerian also 21, from Canning Town, east London, was last Friday charged with throwing or casting a corrosive fluid with intent to burn, maim, disfigure, disable or do grievous bodily harm at Oni.
Konye will appear in custody at Redbridge Magistrates’ Court today. Police had previously arrested a 28-year-old male but he was released without any further action.
Naomi suffered horrific burns to her face, leg, arm and head and was left partially blind after a person dressed in a niqab threw acid over her as she returned to her home in Dagenham, following a shift at the Victoria’s Secret store in the Westfield Shopping Centre in Stratford.
She also lost her hair and eyelashes in the incident and had undergone several operations since.
Doctors had feared that she would be permanently blinded, but after intensive treatment at a specialist burns unit, she recovered sight in her left eye and partial sight in her right eye