By Rita Enemuru, Reporting
An arrested serial burglary suspect, Akpomoghena, on Thursday, explained that he took to the crime because of his inability to raise money for his children’s school fees.
Suspect Akpomoghena
The middle-aged suspect, who said he lived at Water Resources, Effurun, Delta State, therefore, pleaded to be pardoned.
Stonix News reports that the suspect escaped being roasted by a mob when luck ran out of him in an apartment at Egbe Layout, Off Sokoh Estate Road, Effurun, where he had gone to carry out his nefarious act.
Earlier, the suspect was caught wandering in the layout by a staff of Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC), who was on duty distributing electricity bills.
The BEDC staff had accosted the suspect thinking he was a colleague as he was carrying a bag with tools like a staff.
The BEDC staff, who noticed that the suspected thief was fidgeting on interrogation on what he was doing around, left him and put a call across to a resident of the layout informing him that he had noticed a stranger person lurking around.
Thereafter, a mobile policeman at the gate of the layout was alerted and immediately mobilized to an apartment in a four-flat storey building where the thief had entered.
A witness told Stonix News that after a frantic search, the police and some residents gave up and left the apartment.
The story, however, changed when the owner of the apartment, one Nsikan, who was with neighbours and still wondering how the thief got access into his flat despite being securely locked before leaving home, went to the kitchen to take some water from the fridge.
While in the kitchen, he heard a bang; then ran to alert others who immediately recalled the policeman to the crime scene.
After a painstaking search, the burglar was smoked out and apprehended in the kitchen where he was hiding.
Upon interrogation by the residents, who descended on him with clubs and whips, Akpomoghena confessed that he had used a master key and a screw driver to open the three doors leading to the flat.
Items recovered from his bag included a bunch of keys, which, Akpomoghena said, could unlock different doors and cars, a screw driver and a gold-plated wristwatch which he confessed he had earlier stolen from a parked Toyota Camry car somewhere in the layout.
But for the timely intervention of policemen from Ugborikoko Police Station, a jungle justice would have been meted out on him by some aggrieved residents who, after some random beatings, got a tyre, a keg of fuel and insisted on roasting the thief alive.
Some of the residents, who knew Akpomoghena, revealed that he had been severally arrested at different police stations for various crimes.
He was later whisked away to the Ugborikoko Police Station where, according to the police, he was charged to court on Friday.
Contacted on Friday, Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), DSP Bright Edafe, confirmed the arrest, adding that the suspect has been charged to court and granted bail.
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