Palpable anxiety has gripped Umuagaragu, Enyiogugu community in Aboh Mbaise local council area of Imo State, following the gruesome murder of Uzoma Okerenkwo, a 13-year old JSS 2 student of Logara High School, Ngor Okpala, by unknown assassins.
Fear and apprehension enveloped the entire community soon after the lifeless body of Uzoma was discovered along a bush path close to his home.
A villager, who spoke on strict grounds of anonymity, told Vanguard that “Uzoma’s throat was mercilessly slashed by the assassins”.
One of the stories associated with this gory tale was that Uzoma was last seen in company of two other boys before his lifeless body was discovered in the bush.
When Vanguard visited the home of the deceased’s family compound, his widowed mother was looking completely dazed and unable to speak on the issue.
However, late Uzoma’s uncle, Chief Donatus Okerenkwo, explained that the deceased had gone to the market earlier in the day to buy some food stuff for his mother and kola nuts for him.
“News filtered in that there was a corpse in a nearby bush. On getting to the scene, we found out that the reported unidentified corpse was that of Uzoma”, Chief Okerenkwo recounted.
Answering a question, the aggrieved man reasoned that his cousin could have been killed elsewhere but carefully brought close to the family home by the assassins.
“There is no visible sign of a struggle between the slain boy and the murderers. The blood clot around his neck sadly tells the sad tale of how the boy was slain”, Okerenkwo recounted.
Vanguard gathered at press time that a suspect was already helping the police to unravel the circumstances that led to Uzoma’s death, while his remains has been moved to an undisclosed morgue, awaiting autopsy.
