09 December, 2012

Enugu Filling Station Robbery: Suspect Regrets Role


Says, ‘I am just an errand boy in the gang’
The Enugu State Police Command has arrested a suspected notorious armed robber, Chukwujekwu Okolie, said to be one of those terrorising the state in the recent past. He was recently paraded by the state police command with some of the items recovered from him. Okolie and his gang, investigations showed, had been a thorn in the flesh of residents of Obolo Afor community in Udenu Local Government Area of the state.
Not long ago, Okolie and his gang allegedly put the entire Obolo Afor community in fear when they reportedly stormed a filling station in the area. Five members of Okolie’s gang were reported to have carried out the raid on the filling station.
The gang was reported to have arrived at the filling station in a saloon car with registration XD 776 AKL, pretending to want to buy petroleum product before they held the attendants and other workers in the filling station hostage.
The robbers had reportedly threatened to kill their victims should they refuse to cooperate with them. In the end, all the attendants were allegedly robbed of their sales for the day. Valuables like telephone handsets and personal effects were also snatched from the hapless workers. Some items in the store of the filling station were also carted away.
Eyewitnesses said that at the completion of their operation, the criminals fled the scene of the incident, shooting into the air as they fled. The matter was reported at the nearest police command and the state’s Police Commissioner, Musa Daura, reportedly ordered a manhunt for the fleeing criminals.
Before long, however, Okolie was apprehended while his four other partners-incrime are still at large. Okolie, said to be the armourer of the gang, was arrested with many weapons used for their operations.
Some of the items recovered from him, a police source said, included three shotguns, one double barrel shotgun, one double barrel long gun, five live cartridges, three mask caps, a saw blade, jack knife and three Nokia handsets. In his confessional statement to the police, Okolie, who claimed he was “just an errand boy” of the gang, maintained that his partners-in-crime orchestrated the assault on the station.
“We were going out of the state when one of us advised that we fill the tank of the car we were travelling in at that station in case they do not get fuel on the way.
But when we got to the station, we discovered that the attendants there had made a lot of sales for the day and we decided to strike,” said Okolie. But speaking on the arrest of the robbery kingpin, Enugu State Police Command spokesman, Mr Ebere Amaraizu, told reporters that Okolie and his gang had been a thorn in the flesh of residents of the community and Enugu State in general for some time now until he is caught. “Criminals are known not to want to easily own up to their crimes, but this one (Okolie) is cooperating well with our investigators. His arrest is really a major boost for the command,” Amaraizu said.
The Enugu State police spokesman maintained that the swift response of law enforcement agents to the arrest of Okolie was the determination of the state’s police boss to rid the state of criminals especially as the Yuletide draws near.
Amaraizu said the command had intensified security measures to arrest the other four members of the gang.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...