Barely a few days after a group of angry residents of Aba, Abia State lynched two vigilante operatives for robbing and killing a young motor spare parts dealer, a suspected cultist was burnt alive on Saturday evening.
The incident which took place at Port Harcourt Road by Ozuomba Street News Echo gathered was as a result of hot chase from some residents who pursued the suspected cultist in his tricycle and caught up with him.
Some angle of the information gathered from eyewitnesses has it that the burnt body was a tricycle rider who conveyed some members of the dreaded Aro-Cult that has been terrorizing residents of the Uratta Port Harcourt Road axis of the city.
“He was their driver. They went somewhere to snatch people’s bags and steal as usual simply because they noticed that the road is now a little bit motorable since harmattan came.
“They finished, but were given a hot chase by angry residents who shot at the tricycle, it tumbled and caught fire while the guy tried to escape and was lynched right inside there,” a resident who witnessed the incident told News Echo.
News Echo learnt that since the state government began some palliative measures that have seen vehicles now entering the dilapidated Port Harcourt up to the end of Uratta junction, a serious battle has begun against the Aro-Cult group.
Information gathered from residents shows that a certain new group of boys in the city has declared serious war against the Aro cultists whom many allege are collaborating with some vigilante boys to wreak havoc on residents.
News Echo also learnt that the two vigilante members who were lynched at Aba Railway off Ogbonnaya Road on Wednesday got into trouble when they hid under the guise of the Aro cultusts to kill a young motor parts dealer simply identified as Chisom.
The late Chisom as gathered was coming back with some huge amount of money and a brand new phone around 9 pm on Tuesday, 14th of December 2021 when the vigilante boys disguised as cultists, shot him, stole his money, phone and clothes and left him at the pool of his own blood.
Unknown to them, the young man did not die immediately, as he managed, struggled and got to Umeasiegbu Street, Over-Rail Aba, just a few metres away from where he was shot and fell.
Some residents and passers-by who were chased away by the sound of the gun identified him, informed his family and took him to a hospital.
It was gathered that at the hospital before he died, he identified those who attacked him having lived in the area himself and gave leads that warranted a hot pursuit of the vigilante boys.
An impeccable source told News Echo that the hot pursuit which began in the wee hours of Wednesday, 15th December 2021 led to the capture of two out of the three vigilante boys that killed him, as the main leader of the group ran away with the money they stole from late Chisom.
The source also told News Echo that Chisom’s clothes were found in the house of one of the lynched vigilante boys while his brand new phone he recently bought was found in the house of the other vigilante.
According to the source, “When the boys saw his phone and clothes in their houses, that was when they began to say the truth. They have been beating and asking them to confess, but they refused.
“The boy they killed is the only son of his family and the situation is painful to everybody. He is a very hard-working young man who doesn’t look for trouble.
“What happened to those criminals should serve as a huge deterrent to others that Aba is no longer ready to accommodate their likes. “More of them will begin to die from next week because they’ve killed innocent people enough.”
