A woman, Mrs. Preye Daniel has alleged that her son was killed by Police attached to the Anti-Vice Unit of the Bayelsa state Police Command and when she went to report the matter, was told to say hoodlums did it so they could investigate quickly.
The deceased, 17-year-old Innocent, had gone to run an errand for his mother but never returned.
She said they told her he’d been shot by police and she went to report the matter after calling her husband. She said, “I sent Innocent to go and give two thousand Naira to my elder sister’s daughter around 11 a.m Thursday morning, later in the day I was informed that Innocent was shot by the police, and I called my husband, who was in Port Harcourt and he asked me to go and find out what happened.
“First, when I went to the Anti-Kidnapping office of the police and told them that they have killed my son, they asked me to say that it was bad boys that killed him so that they can investigate quickly.”
The boy’s father, a Road Safety Officer with the Rivers State Command of the Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC, Mr. Daniel Kokorifa said of the incident, “the day he died was the day his principal called that he had made his papers, he wanted to read law at the university and now he is nowhere to be found again and he is lying dead in the mortuary. I want justice to be done, to serve as a deterrent.
“They maliciously branded him as having exchanged gun fire with them before he was killed , alleging falsely that they found a locally made pistol and some wraps of Indian hemp on him after his death.
“Initially the policemen at the State Anti-Robbery Squad and the Anti-Vice Unit denied any knowledge, so the following day we went back to the scene of the incident and eye witnesses told us that it was Anti-Vice that shot him and from there we went to anti vice office where they said their boss was not around.”
Mr. Daniel narrated that while he and his wife waited he saw a policeman he knew from a while back and inquired from him about his son, but he was told that there was nothing like that; only to later find out that the same police officer was the leader of that operation that killed my son.
“We went to emergency department of Federal Medical Centre and a woman told us that a doctor told them that policemen brought a body but when they came out to check that they discovered the person was brought in dead and so they left with the corpse. We then went to the mortuary and found his corpse there. I took his picture and went back to report to the Officer in Charge at the Anti-Vice Unit.”
Mr. Daniel described his son as a well-behaved boy who had never been involved in criminal activity and he is demanding justice. He wrote a petition to the Assistant Inspector General of Police, AIG, Zone 5, Benin City, Edo State calling for something to be done.