By Chidi Nkwopara

 Owerri – Kidnapping  became bloody in Imo State, at the weekend, following the abduction of a  High Court judge,  Justice Theophilus Ugwu, and the gruesome murder of his driver and orderly.

Sunday Vanguard investigations revealed that the judge had left his home in the morning to drop his wife at Uratta, Owerri North local council area before leaving for his station.

It was  gathered that “the judge or  his driver  decided to use one of the ring roads currently under construction that would lead them to Orji, on the ever busy Owerri-Okigwe federal highway”.

Our correspondent was  told that the hoodlums, who were operating in a car, forced them to a halt but the driver  refused to open the doors of the vehicle when ordered by the gangsters to do so.

A villager, who claimed to be an eye witness, said  that, “apparently angered by the driver’s obstinacy, the bandits shot him and the police orderly at close range, opened the car  doors  and took the judge away”.

The  villager said the gangsters abandoned the murdered driver and orderly  in the judge’s car and zoomed off with  Ugwu in their own vehicle.

It was  learnt that the police later  visited the scene of crime and took the judge’s car away to their station. It  was not, however, clear at press time if the gangsters have made contacts with the victim’s family.