She had spoken to her coach the night before. She was eight days away from collecting her MBA. She had run on tracks across two continents, supported her family from thousands of miles away, and built a life in the United States through sheer determination.
On May 8, Oluwabukola Pereira walked into work at an auto centre in Lockland, Ohio, and never came home.
The 30-year-old Nigerian middle-distance athlete and graduate student was shot dead during an alleged robbery at the Arise Auto Center on North Wayne Avenue — a place she went to every day, where colleagues knew her by name, and where she served as a cashier handling cash transactions with the trust her employers placed in her.
She was killed in broad daylight, eight days before her graduation.
A Career Built Across Two Continents
Pereira’s athletic career began in Nigeria and stretched across more than a decade of competition. She specialised in the 800 metres and 1500 metres — disciplines that demand not just speed but endurance, discipline, and the capacity to sustain effort long after the body wants to stop.
Her personal bests — 2:12.68 in the 800 metres and 4:39.57 in the 1500 metres, both set in Warrensburg, Missouri in May 2019 — reflected a competitive career that took her from the AFN Golden League in Port Harcourt in 2012 through collegiate meets in Joplin, Springfield, and Kearney, to the 2024 Portland Track Festival.
She represented Nigeria on the international stage. She competed in the United States as a student-athlete. She kept running, kept training, and kept studying — pursing an MBA at the same time, balancing the demands of athletic competition with the academic rigour of a postgraduate business degree.
She was, by every account, someone who did not do things by halves.
“I Tried to Call, I Thought It Wasn’t True”
Don Simpson, a co-worker at the Arise Auto Center, described Pereira as widely respected among colleagues. He knew her routine. He knew her role. When he heard the news, he could not accept it.
“They called me and told me she didn’t make it,” Simpson told WCPO Cincinnati. “I see her every day. Like I said, she does the cash. When people come in with cash, she pays for the cars. I was delivering a load, and at first I thought it wasn’t true — cause it’s broad daylight.”
That detail — broad daylight — carries its own weight. This was not a late-night incident in an isolated location. It was the middle of a working afternoon, in a business, surrounded by ordinary daily life.
According to Simpson, Pereira attempted to confront the suspect during the robbery. She did not simply comply and step aside. She resisted. It cost her everything.
A Family Informed, a Community Shattered
Back in Nigeria, Pereira’s family learned of her death from her coach. Rauf Abass, who had worked with her since the earliest stages of her athletic career, made the journey to the family home alongside her long-time benefactor, Mrs Esther, on a Saturday evening to break the news in person.
“It was very painful news for all of us when we heard what happened,” Abass said. “I tried as much as possible to coordinate her running mates. Some are no longer active in competition, but I brought them together to ensure everyone was informed and visited to offer condolences.”
He described the moment with the quiet devastation of someone who had been close to Pereira for years — someone who had watched her grow from a young track athlete in Nigeria into a graduate student building a future in the United States.
“I pray I never have to be the one to break such news again,” he said.
The loss, he emphasised, extended beyond the personal. Pereira had been a financial pillar for her family. Her earnings, her remittances, her presence — all of it woven into the fabric of people who depended on her as much as they loved her.
“She was also a breadwinner for the family, so it is extremely painful for them,” Abass said. “I had even spoken with her the night before the incident occurred.”
The Investigation: A Suspect Description, a Public Appeal
The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the shooting and issued an initial shelter-in-place order while officers secured the area and warned residents to avoid nearby streets.
The coroner confirmed Pereira died at the scene from gunshot wounds.
Detectives have since appealed to residents and business owners in both Lockland and the neighbouring community of Lincoln Heights to review any available surveillance footage — including Ring camera recordings — captured between 12:30 and 3:00 p.m.
The suspect is described as a Black man of heavy build, wearing grey sweatpants and a black top or sweatshirt, possibly wearing a long black wig. He fled toward a creek behind the business after the shooting. As of the time of reporting, no arrest has been made.
A Foundation, a Faith, and a Future That Was Already Mapped
Pereira’s fiancé, Gbenga Showole, spoke about the woman he planned to marry with the clarity of someone describing someone irreplaceable.
“Anybody you talk to who’s met her will tell you how much her faith was important to her and how much caring for other people was really important to her,” Showole told Fox19 Now Cincinnati.
He confirmed that plans are now underway to establish a foundation in her memory — a tribute designed to carry forward the values she lived by and the community spirit she embodied.
The MBA she was studying for would have been conferred on May 16. She died on May 8.
Eight days. That is the distance between where she was and where she was going.
An Appeal for Information
The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office and Lockland investigators continue to appeal for public assistance. Anyone with surveillance footage or information about the suspect’s movements between 12:30 and 3:00 p.m. on May 8 in the Lockland and Lincoln Heights areas is urged to come forward.
Oluwabukola Pereira was 30 years old.
She deserved better than how her story ended. The least the investigation can do now is ensure it does not end without accountability.
