Police Demanded Money From Us to Take Olakunrin to Hospital, Aide Alleges

Ololade Adeyanju & Matilda Omonaiye/

Oke Olasehinde, an aide to Mrs. Funke Olakunrin, has claimed that the slain daughter of Afenifere National Leader, Pa Reuben Fasoranti, might have lived if the police had not delayed in taking her to the hospital.

Oke made the claim while speaking with journalists at the residence of the Afenifere leader in Akure, Ondo State yesterday.

Oke stated: “The people (bandits) were about 20 in number. They shot at our vehicle; as we were about reversing the vehicle, they shot mummy (Olakunrin). When the policemen came, we begged them to assist us in taking her to the hospital. But one of them asked us to bring N1,000 for them to fuel their vehicle.

“Maybe if we had got to the hospital on time, she would have survived it because she lost a lot of blood. She died when we got to the hospital.”

The deceased’s driver, Mr Tayo Ogundare, said the attackers wore masks as they attacked them.

His words: “We were on our way to Lagos, but some minutes after the Ore Toll Gate, these men just rushed out from the bush and started shooting at us. I can’t say exactly their number, but they were many. They were shooting sporadically.

“Then mummy (Olakunrin) said, ‘it seems these are those people, please let’s turn back’. But as I was reversing, I hey continued to shoot at us until I ran into a ditch and our vehicle upturned.

“Then I heard mummy saying repeatedly that she had been hit. But the rest of us came out of the vehicle through the broken windscreen and ran into the bush.”

Meanwhile, the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, has deployed special forces to hunt down the killers of Olakunrin.

He disclosed that Ondo State Police Command, backed by Special Forces and seasoned investigators from the Force Criminal Investigation Department, the Intelligence Response Team and the Technical Intelligence Unit, deployed from the Force Headquarters, Abuja, had already commenced a massive manhunt for the hoodlums.

The IG, who announced this in a statement in Abuja yesterday, by the Force spokesman, Frank Mba, revealed that he had also ordered the total overhaul of security architecture on the highways in the southern part of the country as part of measures to prevent a future occurrence of such incident.

The IG gave the assurance that the Olakunrin’s killers “will certainly be found and made to face the full wrath of the law.”

The statement reads in part, “In this vein, the Commissioners of Police in the affected states were ordered by the IG to embrace adequate security arrangement in their areas of jurisdiction.”

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