By Favour Nnabugwu

A middle-aged man suspected to be a car snatcher was shot dead in the bathroom of a pastor (name withheld) in Kubwa, Abuja last week.
His  three-man gang was being pursued after it  allegedly snatched a vehicle from a victim when the suspects  ran in different directions.

The  deceased  ran into an uncompleted building  directly behind the pastor’s house  while trying to hide from the police. He   jumped into the  pastor’s compound and then into his  living room where the pastor’s wife saw him about 1pm on Sunday in Pipeline, Kubwa and raised  the alarm.
The pastor’s wife, who was visibly  startled  by the incident,  narrated her experience.

She told Sunday Vanguard: “We  came back from  church after service at about 1 pm. Soon thereafter, I sent  my little brother to go and fetch water for our use.  Suddenly, I heard sounds of footsteps like somebody was running. l quickly  went out of my apartment to check what was happening. To  my amazement, when I returned, l saw a  man in my living room. I asked who he was, how he got to my apartment and what  his mission was? He kept telling me  he would explain to me later.”

She continued: “My little brother returned from where he went to fetch water outside the compound and joined me in asking the man how he got in and who he was. We also demanded that he should leave the house immediately but he still didn’t move. At that point, l rushed out with my little brother. We ran outside the gate to raise  the alarm.

“Fortunately, l saw some policemen in mufti dragging a man  and apparently looking out for the one in my house; so l drew their attention to the stranger in my house. The policemen rushed in. On getting to our living room, the man had run into my bathroom and hid  there. All efforts by the policemen to persuade him to surrender were  not fruitful; so they went into the bathroom to drag him out. But instead of him to quietly surrender, he engaged  the policemen in a scuttle, hence they shot him, ripping  his intestines open and  pulling down the door of my bathroom in the process”.

The pastor’s wife  added, “l have never witnessed or experienced this kind of thing in my life.”
Also  speaking to  our reporter, the pastor said  he was still in church  after the wife and the children had left for home when he received a call from the wife asking him to come home immediately as  there was an emergency. He heeded  the call knowing that his wife hardly made such calls. ” I was in  church when my wife called me to say l should come home quickly, that there was an emergency. I hurriedly headed straight home. On getting to  my compound, l saw a corpse on the floor with policemen in mufti and two men  arrested.  l went into the house where my wife narrated the entire episode to me,” the pastor said.

”It was apparent that the man gained entry  into the building from the uncompleted building behind us and entered my house  as the door was not shut.
”I thank God for His intervention otherwise  the suspect could have strangled or killed my wife or members of my family before they  ran out to draw people’s attention or,  if he succeeded in over powering  the police and taking the guns from them, l don’t know what would have happened.”

In an interview, the chairman of the community, Mr Chukwuma Samuel Keha, told Sunday Vanguard that  the major problem of residents was security.
Keha said, “Our problem in this community is security. We hardly see police patrol. It is by the effort of  residents that we were able to arrange security men to keep watch over the community.”
The policemen were said to have taken the corpse and the other two suspects away at the time  our reporter got to the scene but blood stains and bullet shells were still seen scattered in  the pastor’s compound.