Okey Sampson, Aba
Policemen attached to Abia state command, in the wee hours of yesterday arrested four kidnap suspects who had been terrorizing the commercial city of Aba and its environs.
This is even as the police recovered a Sienna Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV), five different car keys and two different vehicle plate numbers.
Confirming the arrests, the state commissioner of police, Ene Okon said that following intelligence report, his men led ambush in one of the hideouts of the notorious gang at Osisioma axis of Aba for several days.
Okon said his men’s patience paid off when at about 3.00am yesterday, his officers who have been on the hoodlums’ trail encountered them and in the ensuing shootout, four of the alleged kidnappers were arrested.
CP Okon said the Sienna Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) which the men of the underworld used for their operations, was recovered. Also recovered by the police were two vehicle plate numbers which the hoodlums interchange intermittently on the SUV to deceive security operatives.
Equally recovered by the police were five different car keys which the criminals may have stolen from their owners.
Okon said the arrests were made possible due to the renewed vigour of officers and men of the command in fighting crime in the state and the change in strategy which has made the police to take the war to kidnappers in the state.
“We adopted a new strategy in fighting kidnapping and other violent crime in the state which is taken the war to the kidnappers themselves and this strategy is paying off; we are going to sustain the war”.
While advising other criminals in Abia to leave as the state was not going to be conducive for them any longer to carry on their nefarious activities, Okon said those arrested would be interrogated after which they would be charged to court.
Okon said with the arrest of the suspects and the killing of a kidnap kingpin in the Ogbor Hill area of Aba about four weeks ago, the city was going to have some calmness in the days ahead.