Ogun vigilante service kill two residents Officials of the Vigilante Service of Ogun State have killed two persons they allegedly mistook for armed robbers in Abeokuta, the state capital. The deceased, Akeem Usman, 32, and 29-year-old Raji Moruf, resided at Sorinola Avenue, Oriyanrin, Abeokuta before the incident. Thirty-year-old Abayomi Awoyejo, who claimed to have survived the incident, said that the vigilante service men stormed the victims’ resident at midnight on Saturday and shot them dead. Our correspondent however gathered that the vigilante men were responding to a distress call by a resident who had raised the alarm against the presence of alleged hoodlums in the area. Awoyejo said, “I was playing my palm-top CD in the sitting room when I dozed off. At about 12am, one of the people in the house, Lateef, woke me to alert me of the presence of robbers around. “We ran helter-skelter to get the key to lock the door. We eventually located the key and we attempted to open the gate.’’ He said that as they were about to open the gate, they saw somebody’s shadow and before they couldask questions, a shot fired from a nearby building hit Moruf. “Moruf was screaming that he had been hit by a bullet. We were struggling to provide first aid to him. Some of us were making telephone calls to seek help; suddenly some VSO stormed our sitting room. We told them that we were not armed robbers, but they did not listen. Awoyejo said, ‘’One of us who attempted to challenge them was hit with the butt of their gun. There was confusion in the house when one of them shot Akeem (Usman) at close range.” Awoyejo said both Usman and Moruf who had been shot by the VSO men were left to bleed to death since they could not get first aid treatment. “I watch helplessly as Usman and Moruf bled to death even though I was begging them that we were no robbers.” The Commander of the vigilante service in the state, Major Femi Bisiriyu (retd) described the incident as a case of mistaken identity. He said, “The area is known to be volatile and has in recent time become robbers target, hence we a distress call was received, our men raced to the place,’’ he said The VSO commander added that his men opened fired in self-defence when they noticed that one of the deceased persons was holding an object that “looked like a gun while trying to open the gate’’. He said some the officials had been arrested by the police, while investigation into the incident had started.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 10:32:41 +0000
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