November 12, (THEWILL) – The police have arrested a commercial driver suspected to be responsible for the death of a Vanguard Journalist, Tordue Salem.
The suspect, a 29-year-old commercial driver, Itoro Clement was paraded on Friday in Abuja.
The police public relations officer, Frank Mba said Clement was arrested following an investigation carried out by the Force Intelligence Bureau.:
He said Clement, who was driving a 2004 Model Camry with number plate BWR 243 BK confessed to having hit Tordue at about 10:00 pm on the night of 13th October 2021, around Mabushi area in Abuja but ran away.
The driver, during interrogation, said, “I thought it was an armed robber that I knocked down until the following day when I saw a smashed phone on my windscreen. The phone was not working again so I threw it away.”
Explaining why he did not wait after the accident; Clement claimed that the area where the incident occurred is notorious for criminal activities.
“The place I knocked this person down, is a criminal place everybody knows that place”, he said.
The 29-year-old commercial driver further explained that after driving for some miles, he came across a Police Checkpoint and reported to the officers on duty that he had hit someone. He said they told him to go to the Wuse Police Station to report himself, but he refused and went straight to Good Friends Garden where he normally parked his car, before proceeding home to his bed.
Explaining how he was arrested, Frank Mba, said the detectives from the Intelligence Response Team (IRT) began an investigation into the disappearance of Late Tordue which led them to trace his phone found at Good Friends Garden, Mpape in Abuja.
According to Mba, “when Clement hit Tordue, the victim’s phone, an iPhone fell on the car’s wheel screen. The suspect however disposed of the phone at Good Friends Garden where he usually parked his car. But the phone was picked by some boys working in the garden and some parts of the phone were sold by the boys.”
He however said the boys also tried using the SIM cards for calls, which made it easy for the police to trace the phone.
The police spokesman said further investigations led to the eventual arrest of Clement.
He also disclosed that Late Tordue’s corpse was found at about 11:30am on Thursday, 11 November 2021 at the Wuse General Hospital Morgue in Abuja.
He said during a search on the body, a Keystone bank debit card, a Union Bank debit card, an ID Card issued by Vanguard Newspaper, an NUJ ID Card, and a temporary ID Card from the National Assembly Media Corp, all bearing the Late journalist’s name were found.
However, expressing concern about the explanation over the incident, Journalists further probed why the management of Wuse General Hospital (where Tordue’s body was found) did not report the incident for long since documents belonging to Late Tordue were on him.
When newsmen asked if the police were going to include the hospital management in the prosecution, Mba said the police will address issues of negligence on the part of the hospital management and even the policemen at the Wuse checkpoint on the night of the accident after all the facts of the matter have been gathered.
An indigene of Benue State, Salem covers the House of Representatives and was last seen on October 13, 2021, a situation that led to protest and agitation by Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Abuja
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