Breaking: Armed robbers kill man, steal phones in Mile 1

Kelechi Esogwa-Amadi

No. 11 Ikwerre Road, Mile 1, Diobu, Port Harcourt, is currently in disarray as a three-man gang of armed robbers, a few minutes ago, stormed the compound and killed a businessman after robbing a boy and a girl in the same office today.

TPCN, which was around the popular Education Bus Stop in Mile 1 when the incident happened, gathered that the business man was the owner/proprietor of Telecomms, a telecommunications business centre that sells recharge cards, registers telephone lines of the different networks, retrieves lost lines and sells phones.

Narrating how the incident happened, the boy who was also robbed, said one of the armed robbers entered first and pretended to have come to register his line but was making calls.

He said after some minutes, the other two armed robbers entered and started demanding for phones and money which they surrendered for fear of being shot.

However, according to the boy, when the armed robbers got to the man, inside the same shop, he refused to surrender his items and instead began to argue with the armed robbers, which prompted one of the armed robbers to shoot him on the head. He died on the spot as his brain was said to have spilled out.

“We were in the shop when one guy just entered. We thought he came to register his line or buy a phone but as we waited for him to tell us what he wanted, he started making calls, so we were waiting for him to finish his call. The next thing we saw was that two other boys entered with guns and they started collecting our phones and systems (laptops). They collected my system and all the Android phones.
“They now went inside and Oga began to drag with them; the next thing we saw, they shot him on the head and he fell,” the boy explained in tears.
When TPCN visited the scene of the incident at 11 Ikwerre road, the place was packed full with sympathizers and three traffic policemen and women were there.

On why they could not rush the man to the hospital, one of the policemen said: “That’s what we want to do but they don’t want to allow us.

“You can see that the place is full of people and now they have even locked the shop.”

TPCN can report that the armed robbers, after robbing their victims, rushed out and crossed to the other side of the Ikwerre road, released another shot in the air to scare people and then rushed into their green gulf car and zoomed off.

As at the time of filing in this report, the late attacked man was still lying dead in his shop but a team of police men had arrived in their white hilux van.