‘Policemen shot my brother twice in the chest’_witness tells panel

A witness, Miss Lucy Thompson has alleged that, policemen attached to the defunct Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS) shot her bother, Thompson Thompson to dead while returning from work on August 2010.

She made this allegation to the Judicial Panel of Investigation on Incidences of Police Brutality in Akwa Ibom sitting at High Court Complex in Uyo Monday, insisting that her brother was shot twice in the chest.

According to the fashion designer from Idua community in Eket local government council of the state, the late brother was returning home when he was suddenly accosted by members of the disbanded SARS.

Narrating the ordeal, she said while in their house watching movie, she suddenly heard some noise outside of people talking rashly and seeming like a fight. She dashed to the scene only to see policemen beating her brother because they wanted to collect his bag which he refused to give them. One of the cobs was shouting that if he did not release the bag, he was going to shoot him.

She said when the deceased, who was an artisan finally decided to let go of the bag to the policemen which she said contained handy tools, he was fired twice in the chest. They immediately put him in the trunk of their vehicle and zoomed off to their station.

“But while he was trying to give the bag to them after being maimed and before I could realize, one of them (policemen) shot him twice in the chest, I was there present,” she validates.

“A lot of people who came out, saw what happened. In fact, when they noticed that more people were coming out to the scene, they immediately took my brother’s corps into the trunk of their car and drove to the Police Divisional Headquarters there in Eket Local Government.

“My father went to the station and reported the incident which I also followed. When I got there, I saw my brother’s corps at the veranda of the station and they did not allow me to get close to him.

“My father through his Barrister, later wrote a letter to the Akwa Ibom State Commissioner of Police and The Inspector General of Police but till date nothing has been done.

According to her, the brother’s corpse was deposited in one of the morgues in Eket and was later buried in 2014 after several letters sent to the Commissioner of Police in the State and Inspector General of Police yielded no result.

The seven-man-panel presided over by Hon. Justice Ifiok Ukana adjourned the case to January 21, 2021 for further hearing.