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.
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