By: Felix Ikpotor
Traders and residents of Mile 1 Market were thrown into panicky and mourning Friday morning as yet to be identified gunmen stormed the area and killed a businessman and also robbed a boy and girl in the area.
The incident occurred at the ever busy No. 11 Ikwerre Road, Mile 1, Education Bus stop, Diobu, Port Harcourt.
It was gathered that the slain business man was the owner of Telecomms, a telecommunications business centre that sells recharge cards, registers telephone lines of the different networks, retrieves lost lines and sells phones.
PHSpectator also learnt that a whooping sum of money was carted away by the armed robbers.
Narrating how the incident happened, the boy who was also robbed (names withheld) 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.
Our correspondent who visited the area shortly after the incident said the place was packed full with sympathizers and three traffic police officers.
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.”
Is was further gathered 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 deceased has been evacuated to an unknown morgue by the police.
