Operatives of the Nigeria Police Force’s Intelligence Response Team (IRT) have arrested Okechukwu Edison and Sunday Morison for armed robbery and kidnapping of a female lawyer in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.
Preliminary investigations revealed that both suspects, who hail from Rumuji in Emohua local government area of Rivers State, were long-time kidnappers, armed robbers, and car snatchers, who escaped from prisons in Imo State.
After successfully coordinating the kidnapping of the female legal practitioner in Port Harcourt city, the suspects were apprehended on November 10, 2022 at Rumuola junction in the Rivers State capital.
The two suspects, along with two other criminal gang members, who carried out the kidnapping, had previously spent 11 years in the Nigeria Correctional Service (NCoS) in Imo State as awaiting trial inmates for the offense of kidnapping .
The suspects confessed to the Intelligence Response Team led by DCP Tunji Disu that, “we left the correctional facility on Monday April 5, 2022 during the attack on the prison by a group of unknown gunmen who threw dynamites at the walls of the prison and commanded inmates to flee.
“We went into kidnapping, robbery, and car theft after some armed soldiers invaded and destroyed the oil bunkering site we were making a living from after the jail break freedom as we lost everything that was sustaining our family.”
The suspects, along with another gang member, who is also an ex-convict from the same prison facility, were later apprehended by Police for kidnapping the female lawyer in Port Harcourt.
They were apprehended after IRT agents received information about the kidnapping of a female lawyer who had been held captive for three days.
The lawyer was released after the suspected criminals were apprehended, and she identified two of the suspects in the Police net as the people who kidnapped her and stole N5 million from her bank account.