Gone too soon...a week after wedding

‘It’s the police’, family says. ‘No! He was killed by armed robbers,’ Police reply

MESSAGES from friends and relations were still coming in, congratulating Uzo Ozuah and his beautiful bride, Joan, on their wedding at The Redeemed Evangelical Mission (TREM) headquarters on Saturday, September 15, 2012.

In fact, one of their friends had visited to congratulate them for a grand ceremony and was about to leave when Uzo, 36 years old, and a computer engineer, told his wife he would accompany him off to the expressway where he could get a taxi home.

The two friends were waiting to flag down a taxi at UPS Bus Stop along Gbagada  Oworonshoki Expressway at about 10.00 p.m., when, according to an eyewitness who wanted to maintain anonymity: “Some policemen drove in a Pick-up Van, pulled-up and shot him twice in the chest at close range.

“The bullets came out through his back.

“ He was not asked to identify himself, argued with them or did he resist arrest.

“He just stood with his friend when they shot him dead and fled, ” said the eyewitness.

The policemen, allegedly drunk, were said to have fled the scene immediately they saw Ugo fall.

But, the Lagos State Police Command Spokesman, Ngozi Braide, an Assistant Superintendent of Police, said the late Ozuah was not killed by the police but by suspected armed robbers operating in a Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV).

She said the Divisional Police Officer at Anthony Village ran to the scene when they heard the gunshot and found Ozuah already dead and thereafter, removed the body to the mortuary.

Joan, his wife of barely one week, now suddenly a widow, was too shattered by the killing of her husband that she could not utter a word.

The late Ugo’s elderly mother, Mrs. Chine Ozuah was said to have been in a near-coma at their Maryland, Lagos home, since she heard of the death of her only surviving son.

Speaking of her brother, his immediate elder sister, Mrs. Uzor Nwogu said: “Ugo was a perfect gentleman, very easy-going.

“I have never seen him fight anyone.

“My last words with him were a few days ago when he was trying to know my assessment of the wedding and to know if everyone who attended was well taken care of.”

His immediate younger sister, Uju, was inconsolable   as she told The Guardian she still could not believe it was true.

“I don’t know how to describe my brother.

“He was a very calm person who taught me how to be gentle and tactful.

“ I had not seen him since after the wedding last Saturday and now this.”

Since the killing, hundreds of sympathizers had been thronging their home to sympathise with Joan, particularly whose marriage was brutally cut short by trigger-happy policemen even as it was beginning.

Many are also wondering how an aged mother can survive the sudden death at the hands of policemen of her only surviving son, everyone agreed was a gentleman.

Just a few weeks ago, tricycle operators in Meiran on the outskirts of Lagos went on rampage over the killing of Dele Oroja, the chairman of Meiran/Ilepo branch of Three Wheelers Association of Nigeria by a Police Corporal, Abbey Adekunle.

The former Divisional Police Officer of Pen Cinema Police Station, Mr. Segun Fabunmi, is still being detained following his alleged shooting to death of Ademola Aderinola in the Ogba area.