New Telegraph

21 held for killing policemen, looting in Abia

Police yesterday paraded 21 suspected looters, arsonists and killers of two police officers in Aba, Abia State, who hijacked the #EndSARS protest to perpetrate crime. The state Police Commissioner, Mrs. Janet Agbede, paraded the suspects at the Command Headquarters, Umuahia. She said: “On Tuesday October 20, 2020, the #EndSARS protesters murdered two police officers, beheaded and burnt one of them to ashes. They also robbed them of their arms.

The hoodlums looted and burnt a building housing a unit of the police at old Zone 6 Annex, Aba. ” The police chief added that the hoodlums also attempted attack on police stations simultaneously and the Umuahia Correctional Centre with the intent to set them ablaze but were repelled by a combined team of the police and military. Agbede gave the list of looted and burnt buildings during the protest in the state to include five banks, one High Court, one Magistrates’ Court and Aba South Town Hall as well as the church therein.

Others were, Abia State Fire Service building at Aba, 102 government and private-owned vehicles, street lights in Aba and Umuahia. According to her, the hoodlums also dislodged traders at onion, yam and water melon markets in Aba. She added: “Also, on October 24, 2020, the hoodlums broke open a warehouse opposite Golden Guinea (breweries), Umuahia, where some bags of fertiliser and a few bags of rice for replanting preserved with chemicals were kept and started stealing them.

“However, following a distress call, a combined team of the police and the military repelled them.” Agbede also said her men had recovered “one FNC rifle with 12 rounds of live ammunition and other weapons of violence in connection with the killings, looting and burnings”. However, one of the suspects, a 70-yearold man, Umu n n a Ikechukwu Eze, from Akaeze in Ebonyi State, who resides in Aba, said he was arrested in place of his son, Uche, who was not at home when they came for him. Eze said he was a commercial bus driver in Aba.

He said: “During the protest the local vigilantes in Obohia in Aba came for Uche and when they did not find him they took me. That was how I was arrested.” Eze added that he had repeatedly warned his son to change his ways but he refused.

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