A police sergeant, arrested for
stealing a motorbike has told detectives attached to the Special Anti-Robbery
Squad (SARS), Abia State Police Command, that he is innocent.
The suspect, Sergeant Matthew Elah,
attached to the Department of Operations, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, said he
was tricked into following his friend, Sergeant Isah Alhaji, attached to 48 PMF
Ahoda, to the scene of the crime, but insisted he didn’t know Alhaji went with already
contrived plan of stealing.
Elah, 39, from Benue State, married
with five children, said: “On that fateful day, a friend of mine met me at
Obehie, where I live in Abia State. He was not in complete uniform. He was with
his gun. He asked me to follow him to somewhere. I asked him where he was
going; he said I should follow him to where they snatched his motorcycle, so
that he could recover it. He said somebody called him to say that they have
seen the stolen bike.”
According to Elah, when he and
Alhaji left his home, he thought they were heading to the place where they
would retrieve the motorbike.
Alhaji stopped a commercial
motorcycle to take them to the place.
Elah said: “As we were going, he
ordered the cyclist to stop near the gate of a residential building. I thought
he wanted to knock at the gate, but to my surprise, Alhaji jumped on the motorbike
when the cyclist stepped away to ease himself. He jumped on it and sped off.”
The Abia State Commissioner of
Police, Mr. Leye Oyebade, alleged that Elah was arrested after snatching the motorcycle
from the owner at Umunteke junction, Ukwa East Local Government Area.
Oyebade said: “Operatives attached
to SARS Obehie, acting on information, gathered that on October 26, 2016, some policemen
robbed and snatched motorcycle from the owner at Umunteke Junction Akwete,
swung into action and arrested one Matthew Elah with Force/No 233431 SGT. He is
attached to the Department of Operations, Port Harcourt, Rivers State.”
Elah was not coherent in his
narrative. He had confessed to have escorted a robber with gun, stressing that
it was the first time he would ever engaged in such an operation. He later said
he didn’t commit the crime because of monetary or material reward.
He further said that when Alhaji
rode off with the motorbike, the owner chased him, but couldn’t catch up with
him.
Elah said: “I went back to my house.
The next day, I met Alhaji in Port Harcourt. He told me that it was the missing
bike he was looking for which he took to Port Harcourt where he is working. Three
days later, the bike rider, who lives at Obehie, saw me. He ran after and
shouted thief! Thief! He told the people there that I was one of the two
robbers that snatched his bike three days earlier. The people gathered,
attacked and battered me. They would have killed me if not for the intervention
of the police. I was the one who begged them to take me to the police.”
During the course of investigation,
Elah was taken to Alhaji’s place of work in Port Harcourt.
He said: “Alhaji was posted to a
filling station at oil mill Port Harcourt, Rivers State. When the police took
me there, the manager said Alhaji ran away, abandoning his gun. It was the
admin manager that took the gun. Even at the Mobile base in Port Harcourt, he
was nowhere to be found.”
The manager told the policemen that
came on investigation that he noticed Alhaji with the motorbike. He further
said that when Alhaji was leaving, he left with the motorbike.
Investigators discovered that Alhaji
lives in Azumiri, Ukwa East Local Government Area, but works in Port Harcourt. Elah
also described the owner of the motorbike as a friend.
Elah said: “The bike Alhaji snatched
belonged to a friend. If Alhaji told me about that he was going to steal it, I
wouldn’t have agreed. “
Oyebade said that the stream of
successes recorded by the command could be traced to the determination of the
command to rid the state of criminals, especially during the ember months.
His words: “My management team and
I, evolved strategies aimed at achieving the command’s determination. The Area
Commanders, Divisional Police Officers and other Heads of Department have been
mandated to exploit the avenues of intelligence led policing/community
policing, visibility policing and the involvement of the Eminent Peoples Forum,
Police Community Relations Committee (PCRC) and Police Assistance Committee
(PAC) to achieve these aims.”
No comments:
Post a Comment