I never meant to kill him says 16-year-old murder suspect

Ede

Ime Ede is just 16-year-old.

The age when most boys his age are burning the midnight candle in preparation for their University and Polytechnic entrance examinations.

It was at this age that Ede was charge with murder.

According to Homicide detectives, Ede stabbed his co-worker to death over a N200 loan disagreement at the Ajegunle area of Lagos.

The Nigerian Compass gathered that trouble started after Ede repeatedly asked his colleague, Asuquo Effiong to refund his money.

But rather than settle the matter amicably, the boys engaged each other in fisticuffs, with Ede finally picking a broken bottle to stab his co-worker on his hand.

The boy was said to have been rushed to hospital, but later died due to loss of blood.

Police said: “The fight was said to have been triggered off by an argument over an indebtedness of about N200, unfortunately, during the cause of the fight, the suspect was said to have picked a bottle, broke it and stabbed the deceased, resulting to fatal injury. Efforts were made to save his life. He was rushed to General Hospital Ajeromi, but died due to excessive bleeding. The injury was severe.”

Police spokesman Frank Mba explained that on February 26, at about 10:30pm, a call was received at the KiriKiri Police Station about the death of the victim.  The call was from Harry Eze, manager/owner of the Restaurant where the boys work.

The Restaurant is located at block B6 Kirikiri prisons, barracks, Kirikiri town.

 Looking very sober as he spoke, Ede recollected the incident that led to the death of his colleague Effiong, who had once been his friend.

His words: “Effiong sold drink to a customer, and didn’t have change to give to the customer. I loaned him N200, but when he wanted to return it, he gave me N1000. But before then, he had already sold two bottles of beer, but he had not given the customer change. The man started shouting that Effiong should give his change.”

When Ede felt the customer’s noise was becoming much, he asked Effiong if it was okay for him to give the customer his change of N200, so that he would refund him later, Effiong accepted.

According to Ede, the customer asked him to use the N200 to buy him a recharge card, which he did. When Ede was ready to collect his money from Effiong, it soon turned into a nasty argument which snowballed into a fight.

The suspect claimed that he did everything to avoid getting into a fight with Effiong, but deceased just would not let go.

He said: “I went to the kitchen to get pepper soup for a customer, Effiong attacked me. He started punching me, even though he saw that I was carrying a plate of hot pepper soup.”

Now quite angry, Ede had wanted to retaliate but people held him, but Effiong allegedly continued to punch him from all sides, until he picked a bottle and broke it.

“I saw a bottle on the floor; I broke it and tried to stop him from punching me again. But I ended up stabbing him,” cried Ede. “I feel so bad now. I feel very unhappy. It was a mistake. We normally fight before, we had had several quarrels before that one but I never meant to kill him! It was mistake!”