A 17-year-old student in Plateau State, Elijah Anthony, has been arrested by operatives of the state police command for allegedly killing his neighbour’s five -year-old child after collecting N400,000 ransom from the victim’s parents .
Anthony, who is an SS 3 student of Manret High School in Angul D community, Jos South Local Government Area of the state, was among 39 other suspects paraded for various offences at the police command headquarters in Jos on Thursday.
In an interview with PUNCH Metro, Anthony who confessed to killing the five-year-old neighbour identified as Dawom Pam said, “They sent his (victim) elder brother to buy something and the little boy was behind him. So, I and my friend carried the boy and hid him somewhere in an uncompleted building.
“Later, the parents of the boy came looking for him and I also pretended and joined them in the search for their missing child but I did not take them to where the boy was hidden.
“Later, we demanded N5m but we were able to get N400,000. But five days later, the boy was killed. I was the one who killed him because I feared he might tell his parents that I was the one who kidnapped him if we had released him.”
The suspect who expressed regrets over the incident blamed his action on the hardship going in the country.
He said, “I was in my house when the police came and arrested me. It is hardship that drove me into kidnapping and killing. I was supposed to write WASSCE this year but I didn’t. Please, forgive me.”
The state Commissioner of Police, Okoro Julius Alawari, who paraded Anthony and 39 other suspects, disclosed that the corpse of the child had been recovered from a swampy place near the uncompleted building where he was dumped by the suspects and handed over to his parents for burial.
He said all the 39 suspects would be prosecuted when investigations were concluded.
