Gildas and his slain wife

He was arrested after he was sighted by a police commissioner, Hakeem Odumosu, where he was hiding on a mango tree.

The two suspects, Goke Olamilekan and Akande Adeyinka, had, last Sunday, invaded the Lugard, Ikoyi, Lagos State, home of Gilda Tohouo, stabbing the shipping line boss in different places with two different knives.

The police in the state in an operation, personally led by the state police commissioner, had less than an hour after the attack, arrested an electrician in the estate, Goke Olamilekan, said to have invited one of his friends, Akande Adeyinka, to carry out the dastardly act.

One of the two suspects, Akande, had reportedly climbed a mango tree and was hiding when the police boss beamed his torchlight on him and was promptly arrested.

Preliminary investigations by the police revealed that the two suspects had planned the operation for three weeks, before eventually carrying it out last Sunday.

The police also found out that the suspects hid their weapons in one of the vacant flats in the estate and strategized on how to carry out the operation.

The electrician had told his partner in the crime to lie to the security men that he was going to see a certain Mr Max, which coincidentally is the name of one of the residents of the estate.

A police source, who spoke under the condition of anonymity described the Sunday night operation by the police team as “effective and timely “ and added that the two suspects would have escaped from the scene if the police commissioner had not arrived.

The police source also said that the insistence of the Lagos State police boss that they should search everywhere around the estate, despite the darkness, helped in the arrest of the suspects.

The top police source said “the CP was on patrol when he received the distress call and he swiftly moved to the scene, where he mobilised the divisional police officer (DPO) and the Area Commander in the area.

“It was dark and everybody wanted to go home but the CP insisted that we must do something that would help in not just the investigation but also to quickly arrest the perpetrators.“

The top police boss also said that “It was an effective and timely operation. Those boys would have escaped if the CP had not gone there himself. They were hiding and no one would have thought that somebody was on the tree.”

He also stated that “at a time, people felt that it was late and that everybody should go but the CP went to his vehicle and brought out a torch. It was very sharp. He was beaming the light in different directions, when he pointed it up the tree and there, one of the suspects was hiding.”