The Imo State Police Command, last Friday, March 29, 2019, paraded one Friday Nnaekezie, suspected to be the killer of a Chief Magistrate Remi Chukwujieze Ogu Jnr, who was murdered in cold blood late last year, at Orlu.
Parading the suspect at the Police Command headquarters in Owerri, the Imo State Commissioner of Police (C.P) Dasuku Galadanchi, disclosed that the suspect who was arrested had fled to Lagos, after paying the assassin sum of N1500,000.
The suspect was reported to have confessed to the crime and stated that he acted on the suspicion that the deceased, Magistrate Ogu, was having sexual affairs with his wife, Mrs Uju Nwanne, said to be a clerk in the Orlu Magistrate Court. Infuriated by the suspicion of infidelity, the suspect hired three other suspect now at large to whom he hired and paid them the sum of N500,000 to abduct and murder the victim.
The police had upon the receipt of the report of the murder of the Chief Magistrate attached to Oru West local government area, on November 23, 2018, ordered for a full scale investigation into the matter, to unravel the mystery surrounding the incident and possibly arrest the perpetrators of the heinous crime.
According to Galadanchi, following his directives, operatives of the homicide section of the State Investigations Department swung into action and in the course of investigation, Friday Nnaekezie, aged 34 years from Eziama Ubulu in Oru West LGA of Imo state, was indentified.
The culprit who admitted that, he committed the crime, because the deceased was dating Uju Nwanne his wife, was apprehended along with live expended shells of AK 47 ammunition, one milk coloured mask and a secret cult sticker with the inscription “snap 55”, recovered as exhibit.
In another development, the Imo Police Command last week rescued 15 persons, who were kidnapped by some hoodlums on their way to Bayelsa, through the Owerri/Port Harcourt expressway, when they were taken to a forest in Ohaji area of the state.
Briefing the press on the incident, the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO) in the state, SP Orlando Ikeokwu, disclosed that the victims were heading to Bayelsa when the incident occurred. “A Bayelsa bound mass transit bus conveying 15 passengers were intercepted along Owerri/Port Harcourt expressway close to boundary between Imo and Rivers states and the police were alerted”.
The Divisional Police Officer at Ohaji police station promptly mobilized his operatives to go to Umuapu forest for the rescue operation and in the course of combing the forest, the hoodlums were sighted and a fierce gun battle ensued with the fifteen passengers rescued and unmasked.
The hoodlums were suspected to have escaped with some bullets wounds as the police saw only culprits of blood here and there on the ground, and the police recovered a pump action gun loaded with six cartridges. At press time, the victims have been released to rejoin their relatives.
