For seven hours, armed robbers recently laid a
seige to the apartment of a couple in Ikorodu area
of Lagos recently.
The landlord who is simply called John, was
ordered to lie face down for the entire period. At
the end of the ordeal as the hoodlums were about
to leave, they found the victim dead, possibly of
cardiac arrest.
The suspect, who led the gang, Akin Ayotunde
recalled what happened in the seven-hour siege
yesterday when he was paraded, yesterday by the
Commissioner of Police, Mr Fatai Owoseni:
On the fateful day, about two weeks now. Ahmed
brought information that we would get good money
and other valuables from a family. I don’t know the
family’s name. We were five who went there.
“We were armed with cutlasses, daggers and iron
rods. When we arrived in the house, we scaled
through the fence. As we jumped inside the
compound,the owner came out and challenged us,
but when he saw that we were armed and many,
he surrendered himself to us. I told him to
cooperate, as we won’t hurt him.
We marched him
to his sitting room, where we met his wife and
children watching home video. The family did not
wait for instruction from us as they lay face down.
“We took the children to one of the rooms where
we locked them up while we marched the wife to
her room and collected some jewellery, three
phones and some personal effects.
When we got to
the parlour where the man was lying, he was
snoring abnormally I was wondering what was
wrong with a man whose house was under attack
and he would be sleeping and snoring.
“I searched his pockets, and I collected N20,000. I
don’t know why he should be having that kind of
money in his pocket. Well, we collected the wife’s
ATM card which one of us used to collect about
N60,000 in her account.
We came inside the
house at about 9 pm, and thought that if we left at
about 10pm we may run into the police or
vigilance group. We stayed back. We opened the
refrigerator, collected some fruits. We ate to our
fill.
“The unexpected happened at about 4am as we
were about leaving. We packed some items like
Plasma television, Laptops, shoes and many other
things.
We needed the key to his Sports Utility
Vehicle (SUV), We started waking him up, but the
man did not respond.. I suspected danger. I
checked his pulse, I did not need a doctor to tell
me that the man has died of hypertension.
“I called him a coward because we did not harass
the family. Why did the man die?Well, we saw the
key to the vehicle and we packed the loot and
drove off around 4.20am before the wife could
discover and raise the alarm.
“I think it was the man’s blood that found me out.
I took the car to a dealer, Enyojo. He wanted to
sell the car and the buyer knew the owner.
They
called the police. They set me up. I was told to
come for the money at Ojota. When I got there, I
was arrested.
“I have begged God for forgiveness. God knows
that we did not intend to kill the man.I know he
will forgive me, because I am an orphan. I lost my
parents at the age of two. I am an Igbo man, but
my grandmother, a Yoruba, brought me up. That is
why I bear Yoruba name.” he said.
Owoseni said the suspect was helping the police
on how to arrest the rest of the gang.
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