Killer DPO Says He Did Not Know How Bullets Left His Gun

It was a funny session at a Lagos High Court few days ago when a former Divisional Police Officer, DPO, Segun Fabunmi, who shot a young man to death during the January 2012, mass protest on fuel subsidy organized by Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and Trade Union Congress, TUC, confessed that he did not know when the bullets that killed the young man, Ademola Daramola, left his AK 47 riflle.

The DPO who was attached to the Pen Cinema Division of Lagos State Police Command, has since been dismissed from service and has been standing trial for murder, told the stunned court audience that his fingers did not squeeze the trigger of the gun, so it is still an amazement for him that the bullets from his gun flew out to kill the young man.

At the resumed hearing of the trial, Fabunmi said the AK-47 rifle was opened, while on his way to the scene of protest, adding that after Daramola died, he could no longer remember how many rounds of ammunition were left in the rifle until he was about being detained.

The DPO, who was being cross-examined by Lagos State Director of Public Prosecution, DPP, Mrs. Olabisi Ogungbesan, told Justice Olabisi Akinlade that he neither chased anybody, shot nor injured people.

Hear him:

I did not run after the late Ademola Daramola, may his soul rest in peace. I do not know him. Why would I chase him? It is ridiculous. I never ran to anywhere neither did I fire any shot at anybody.

The defendant also told Justice Olabisi Akinlade that on January 9, 2012, he received a distress call that hoodlums at Yaya Abatan Junction, Ogba Agege area, were breaking people’s windscreens and holding innocent people hostage.

He said when he got there, there was break down of law and order and that immediately the hoodlums saw him and the other seven police officers, they started throwing bottles, sticks, cutlasses, stones and Molotov Curtails.

When asked if he knew that some ammunition got out of his gun, Fabunmi said:

Yes. I knew that some ammunition got out of my gun when the hoodlums were trying to dispossess me of my rifle, after I sustained injury.

It took the grace of God for them not to have collected the rifle from me. The other police officers all ran away.

He also said he had only been DPO of Pen Cinema Police Division for two months and that he went to Lagos State University Teaching Hospital for treatment, but could not remember the name of the doctor that treated him.

However, Justice Akinlade adjourned the matter to February 18, 2015, for the adoption of written addresses.