Aluu Four: Mob overwhelmed police team, says accused

    
A former police sergeant facing murder charge over the killing of four University of Port Harcourt students told a High Court that the mob overwhelmed a police team sent to rescue the students.

The accused, Lucky Orji, was charged along with 11 other persons in connection with the killing in Aluu Village in October 2012.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that some other suspects were still at large.

Orji told the court on Thursday that the police patrol team, of which he was a member, could not rescue the students because it was overwhelmed by the mob numbering about 3,000.

Orji, the 2nd accused person, added that the Divisional Police Officer in charge of the area had ordered the team to pull out of the scene of the incident.

Led in evidence by his counsel, Mr Uchechukwu Oputa, Orji said the DPO’s order came on the heels of a distressed call by the team’s commander to the DPO.

According to Orji, the commander had told the DPO that “the team was facing mob of over 3,000.”

Apparently contradicting himself, Orji also said the police had rescued the students and took them to the police patrol vehicle, but did not tell the court what happened thereafter.

The prosecution had alleged that the accused person took part in the murder of the four students instead of protecting them in line with his constitutional duty.

The prosecution, led by Mr Rufus Godwins, the Rivers Solicitor-General, said Orji had used the butt of his AK47 assault rifle to hit one of the victims.

Godwins had made an oral application to the court for the video footage of the scene of the crime to be played to prove his point.

The video footage was played and Orji was captured in the footage hitting one of the victims with the butt of his AK47 rifle, but he denied that he was the very policeman in the footage.

Orji said he had made two statements to the police on October 8, 2012, and October 14, 2012, but claimed he made the October 14, 2012′s statement under duress.