By Mark Lenu
A grocery shop owner in Oshie community in the Ahoada axis of Rivers State has been shot dead by some yet to be identified gunmen suspected to be armed robbers.
It was gathered that the killers stormed the victim’s shop at about 11pm, shot and cut his neck with machetes before running away with all the money he had made from daily sales.
It was also gathered that the robbery gang fled into neighbouring community and robbed other community dwellers before escaping unhurt.
Speaking with our correspondent, the traditional head of the deceased’s community, His Royal Highness, Bright Dede urged relevant authorities to refix the access road of the community, adding that the deplorable state of the road discourages security operatives from swiftly responding to distress call.
The monarch said: “At about 11pm, three unknown gunmen entered into a grocery shop owned by Julius and shot him, he fell down and they used machetes to cut his neck severely before the hoodlums carted away with all the money he has made from sales for the day.
“Before my community could be notified, the robbery gang had ran away, so we couldn’t trace them. But we also heard that they went to the nearby community to rob too.
“The access road to our community is one of the major challenges we have. The road leading to our community is bad. We have some checkpoints, man by soldiers but each time we make a distress call to the soldiers, they refuse coming to our community because our road is bad.
“We are an oil producing community with some oil companies operating in our area, so they supposed to refix our road for us which was destroyed by the 2023 flood.
“So, we are using this avenue for security reason to call on the government and the oil companies in my area to come and repair our road.”
