Questions as missing toddler is found dead

Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Umar Manko

Manko

When the family of a three-year-old toddler started searching for him, they never bargained that they would find him dead.
The toddler, identified as Dara was said to have simply disappeared into thin air, but found hours later along the highway, close to their home at the Mushin area of Lagos State, stone cold dead. The boy’s father, Sola Ezekiel, is however not accepting the death of the boy as an accident. He insisted that there was more to the deceased’s death than meet the eyes.  He alleged foul play. He raised some questions which he wanted homicide detectives to look into.
Some residents in the area also believed that the little boy was murdered, and then his corpse dropped on the road, before a vehicle mounted and smashed its head.
It is also believed that Dara who was under the grips of sleep,  walked out of his grandmother’s house, situated at 74, Agege motor road, about eight houses away from where his corpse was found. When his grandparents woke up, they did not find Dara, at the position where he was supposed to be sleeping. They raised an alarm and a search for him started. When Daily Newswatch visited the house of Dara’s parents at No 17, Kosobameji Street, Mushin, Ezekiel, fondly called Pastor, a commercial bus driver was yet to come to terms with the fact that his little boy was gone forever.
A grieving Ezekiel added that he was not satisfied with the story he was told that his son, while apparently still sleeping,  walked out of the house without any adult sighting him and got hit by an unidentified driver  who bolted.
According to Ezekiel,  the late Dara and Lekan his first born of about six years,  were fond of their granny and were taken to their granny’s to spend the holiday before the unfortunate   incident happened. He said he was alerted on phone by one of his in-laws around 6.30 am on that unfortunate morning, that Dara was nowhere to be found when they all woke up.  He said: “When I got that call, I quickly parked my bus and rushed to my in-law’s house. I got there to see Dara’s corpse. I saw him last on Wednesday which was the day before his death. I promised him and his brother, Lekan, that I would come the next day to pick and take them home.”  On what his reaction was when he saw his son’s corpse, Ezekiel replied: “At first, I thought it was a nightmare and then I saw my wife and her grandma crying as if the cry would wake our baby. It was then it dawned on me that my carbon copy was no more and that there was nothing anybody could do to bring him back to life.
“Later I started wondering how my boy could have walked out of a house full of people.  How could he have walked out of his granny’s house, crossed the drainage that even an adult would think twice before crossing and walked to about eight houses away from there, on that busy road, passed front of a police station that shares the same fence with my in-laws without anybody noticing such a small boy until his corpse was found at Moshalashi bus stop?
“But what can I do? It would not be proper for me to arrest a woman who had been of great assistance to my family because I usually leave home very early in morning and get back late and so does my wife.  “It is this woman that we leave the children with and they are not the only grand children staying there. So you see, my hands are tied.” The late boy’s granny was also visited by Daily Newswatch correspondent.
The woman, who refused to mention her name but was called grandma by the people around her, broke down in another bout of weeping when asked to narrate how Dara left the house without being noticed by anybody. According to her, the whole incident was confusing. She said she could not say if Dara was actually killed by a hit and run driver.  She revealed that an eye witness told them that a vehicle mistakenly climbed over the boy’s corpse after the body was discovered, smashing the boy’s head in the process.  She further said that it was a mystery to discover that one of the people in the house had left the door open early that morning, giving the boy the opportunity to walk out of the house.
But she also wondered aloud how the boy could have walked that distance without anybody challenging him at that hour of the day.
On who she suspected left the door open, she said that none of the people living with her confessed to being the culprit, adding that it was difficult to point accusing fingers at anyone.
But a source very close to the family alleged that grandma’s brother, Segun left the door open.
It was alleged that Segun left the door open when he was leaving the house early that morning.
He was however said to have denied the allegation when he was informed about the demise of the boy that slept beside him throughout the night.
Segun said that he left the boy still sleeping on the chair in the sitting room when he left the house that fateful morning.
When the Divisional Police Officer (DPO), in charge of Alakara Police Station, Mr. Okosun was contacted, he said that the corpse of a boy was found on the road but that the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO) should be contacted for more information on the matter.
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