Posted by By CHRIS ANUCHA on
Eight suspected robbers, including a 300 level student of Lagos State University, recently met their match in the hands of anti-robbery policemen from Ikeja Police Division as one of them was shot dead, and two arrested.
Eight suspected robbers, including a 300 level student of Lagos State University, recently met their match in the hands of anti-robbery policemen from Ikeja Police Division as one of them was shot dead, and two arrested.
Daily Sun gathered that the undergraduate, simply identified as Seidu, was shot dead.
A police source further disclosed that some of the escapees also sustained bullet injuries.
Two of the arrested suspects, Michael Okpe, 29, who resided at Dodan Barracks, Ikoyi and Bright Eyebhori, 18, from Army Signal Barracks, Mile 2, had their legs shattered with bullets.
The eight-man robbery gang had struck at Maryland on Wednesday, February 21, shooting sporadically and dispossessing victims of their money, handsets and other personal effects.
The panic-stricken residents and passers-by reportedly ran helter-skelter to escape the robbers' bullets which were flying in all directions.
Unknown to the bandits, a police patrol team, led by Mr. Ossai Chukwuka, a sergeant, which was stationed at Ikorodu road, near AP filling station, Maryland, had got wind of the operation.
A police source told Daily Sun that the suspects, who were approaching Harbour Works, had killed a security man attached to Plano Motors, Idiroko, simply identified as Kasimu and seriously injured one Yusuf Illor.
'We took time to understand and observe what was happening. To my utter dismay, we sighted an eight-man robbery gang attacking passers-by, dispossessing them of personal effects," a police source explained.
He said they waited for the robbers to pull out to avoid killing innocent people during a shoot-out.
When the robbers eventually pulled out and sighted the police patrol team, they made frantic efforts to shoot their way out of the danger zone, using their motorcycles.
It was during the shoot-out with the police that the 300 level student of LASU was killed near AP filling station, where the exchange of gunfire terminated.
Okpe and Eyebhori were arrested while five escaped, some of them with bullet wounds.
Recovered from the robbers were one browning pistol and two operational motorcycles marked, QT 591 APP and QA 578 APP.
A police source told Daily Sun that the police were spurred by the vow made by the DPO of Ikeja police station, Mr. Imomimi Edgal, a Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP) to make Ikeja area crime-free.
Michael told Daily Sun that he was lured into robbery by Seidu, who he said was 'looking fine."
He said his late father was a soldier, adding that he was still living in the barracks with his mother.
He said Seidu was his classmate at the Army Cantonment Secondary School. The suspect said after their secondary school, Seidu's father was posted to Ojo cantonment, adding that they lost contact.
'Luckily, in January, he came to Obalende and was looking good and he told me he was in LASU and later gave me N3000.
'When he was about going back, he saw that I had a bike and he said I should take him to LASU, Ojo. I took him there and he gave me N5,000 again," Okpe said.
He said Seidu gave him his phone number and when he called him, he asked him to come and check him at the place he dropped him the other day. He said when he got there, Seidu asked him to convey him to Mile 2, adding that after that, Seidu gave him another N5,000, a handset and asked him to be calling him on phone.
Okpe said on the day of the robbery, Seidu asked him to take him to Anthony Village, Ikeja.
'He told me to wait for him in a place and I waited. After they started shooting and people running helter-skelter, he ran back to me and said I should kick-start the motorcycle. When I moved, I saw some policemen and they first shot me." He said the Anthony robbery was his second time.
Eyebhori, who hails from Edo State, said it was his fourth time of taking part in robbery, adding that he started this month.
He said it was the passenger he usually carried from Mile 2 who introduced him into the robbery world. He said the customer had earlier told him to take him to somewhere, and after which, he was given N5,000.
He said it was the fourth time he took him out that he was caught. He said his father, who was a soldier, had died, adding that he was living in the barracks with the mother.
The suspect appealed to the youths to desist from criminal activities, adding that it was bad influence that lured him into crime.