Police arrest jail escapees who planned abduction of lawyer in Port Harcourt
28 November 2022 |
4:05 am
Crack operatives of the Nigeria Police Force Intelligence Response Team (IRT) have arrested Okechukwu Edison, 42, and Sunday Morison for alleged armed robbery and kidnapping of a female lawyer in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.
Escapee suspects
Crack operatives of the Nigeria Police Force Intelligence Response Team (IRT) have arrested Okechukwu Edison, 42, and Sunday Morison for alleged armed robbery and kidnapping of a female lawyer in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.
Preliminary investigations by detectives revealed that both suspects, who hail from Rumuji in Emohua Local Council of Rivers State, were long-time kidnappers, armed robbers, and car snatchers.
After successfully coordinating the kidnapping of a female legal practitioner in the city, the suspects were apprehended by Crack detectives of the Force Intelligence Bureau Intelligence Response Team (FIB-IRT) on November 10, 2022 at Rumuola junction in Rivers State.
The two suspects, along with two other criminal gang members who carried out the kidnapping, had previously spent 11 years in the Nigeria Correctional Service, Imo State, awaiting trial as inmates for kidnapping.
The suspects confessed to the Intelligence Response Team (IRT) led by DCP Olatunji Disu that “we left the correctional facility on Monday, April 5, 2022 during the attack on the prison by a group of unknown gunmen who threw dynamites at the walls of the prison and commanded inmates to flee.”
“We went into kidnapping, robbery, and car theft after soldiers invaded and destroyed the oil bunkering site we were making a living from after the jailbreak freedom as we lost everything that was sustaining our family.”
The suspects along with another gang member who is also an ex-convict from the same prison facility, were later apprehended by police for allegedly kidnapping a female lawyer in Port Harcourt.
They were apprehended after IRT agents received information about the abduction of a female lawyer who had been held captive for three days. Police authorities directed their operatives to conduct an immediate search and rescue of the lawyer.
The lawyer was released after the suspected criminals were apprehended, and she identified two of the suspects as the people who kidnapped her and stole N5million from her bank account.
Recounting his prison experience, the gang leader, Okechukwu Edison, stated that he was imprisoned because he loaned a car to a roommate named Emmanuel, who was later arrested and charged with kidnapping.
He also stated that he had spent eleven years as an awaiting trial inmate in Imo State prison prior to the jail break, and that the attackers of the prison invaded the facility and ordered inmates to leave.
On kidnapping, he stated that they spotted the victim along Igwuruta Road coming out of a shop in the city and kidnapped her, then called one Chukwuemeka Onu, 25 , ‘m’ from his village to arrange for the safe keeping of their victim in an uncompleted building.
According to Onu’s confession, he took Okechukwu, the gang leader, to Eneke, a semi-urban settlement in the city, to make arrangements for where to keep his bunkering equipment without realising he was accompanied by a kidnapped woman.
One of the suspects also admitted that he was imprisoned in the Imo State prison prior to the jailbreak and had spent 14 years there before his case of armed robbery was reassigned to a new judge.
The IRT team is still looking into their involvement in other criminal activities in the state and making efforts to apprehend other gang members.
The Inspector-General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba, through the Force Public Relations Officer, Olumuyiwa Adejobi had previously issued orders that all the suspects be prosecuted as soon as possible.
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