Friday, December 12, 2008

GRUESOME MURDER IN UGANDA

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11th December, 2008
By Nicholas Kajoba and Chris Kiwawulo
NEW VISION

THE shooting of MP Godi Akbar’s wife Rehema Nasur Caesar started as a small disagreement between two presumed lovers, witnesses have said.

Although residents called the Police immediately after the murder at around 11:00pm, witnesses said they only responded in the mid-morning of the following day and took the body to Kawolo Hospital.
The witnesses said they heard Rehema repeatedly screaming and calling out a name, “Richard” as the assailant ran after her.

The New Vision yesterday travelled to Lukojjo village, Nama sub-county in Mukono district and interviewed several eyewitnesses in the area about the tragedy. The witnesses are not named for the sake of their security.

A housewife in Lukojjo village said she heard a woman screaming as she disembarked from a car. She was repeatedly calling out Richard’s name as she moved close to her house.

“My husband and I came out,” the woman said. “The woman came straight to our verandah and stood near us. A medium-sized gentleman who wore a long-sleeved light-blue shirt followed her. They exchanged words in a language spoken by people from the northern part of the country.”
After the brief quarrel, the housewife said, the woman moved closer to the man and knelt down.

They seemed to have reached a compromise and then the woman moved closer to the man “we thought that they knew each other and it was just a small disagreement”.

“But we were shocked when the man pulled out a pistol and fired,” the witness went on. “We scampered for our lives and entered the house. We continued to peep through the window and saw the man carrying the woman on his back as they returned to their car. Mid-way to the car, the girl fell down but the man continued to move towards the car. In the process, the woman got up and started running towards our house again.

The man also followed and shot twice. The woman fell down. He pulled her towards the road but before they reached, he shot her in the face and took off to his car and sped towards Kampala.”

Another witness said he came out of his house after hearing noise and witnessed the murder. “I saw a dark-skinned medium height man following a woman,” the witness said. “He jumped out of the driver’s seat and followed the woman a few metres from the main road where she had run for rescue.”

The assailant, according to the witness, wore a light-blue long-sleeved shirt and was brandishing a pistol. He followed the woman who was at the time screaming out loudly for help. The woman shouted in English: ‘Richard come, Richard come and help me, they are killing me’. The woman, the witness added, shouted out some other words in a language he did not understand. Amid the shouting, the man shot two times as the woman ran away.

After shooting, the man emerged from a dark spot carrying the girl on his back. But before reaching the car, he put her down. The girl ran away again.

The man chased the girl again. After catching up with her, he dragged her on the ground by her hands. But before the man reached the car, he shot directly at the girl, jumped into his car and sped off towards Kampala.

Another witness said: “My family and I were sleeping. I was woken up by a woman screaming for help at around 11:00pm.”

The witness said the woman called out Richard’s name. “I opened the door slightly to get a clear vision,” the witness added. “I saw a man chasing a woman. A few minutes later, I heard gunshots. I got very scared and I closed the door. Later, I heard murmurs from people who had gathered around the body. I discovered that a young woman had been shot dead.”

Lameck Kamya, the Lukojjo village chairman, who lives about 50 metres from the scene of the murder, said neighbours called him

on phone and told him of the crime. “My neighbour asked me whether I had heard the gunshots. Of course I had also heard them. I alerted the Police on phone and rushed to the scene.”

On reaching the scene, he said, he found the dead woman lying in a pool of blood.

“I mobilised villagemates and we pitched camp at the scene until the following day when the Police turned up, Kamya added. “The Police took the body to the Kawolo Hospital mortuary."

Kamya said before the murder, he received information from boda-boda riders that a man had abandoned a car in motion to chase a woman.

“The cyclists told me that the moving car knocked two boda-boda cyclists, leaving them with minor injuries before it stopped by the roadside.”







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