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A 16-year-old student, Paul, has tragically died in Nigeria just 24 hours after undergoing surgery for a gunshot wound.
Paul was reportedly shot by a landlord on Monday while retrieving a ball that had entered the landlord’s property during a school football game.
The heartbreaking news was confirmed by Paul’s guardian, Mr. Jonathan Odikanwa, who said the medical team at Specialist Hospital in Umuguma, Owerri, lost Paul on Thursday afternoon.
Odikanwa shared this tragic update in a voice note sent to news outlet the Punch:
He has passed away. My son has passed away. The doctors just said they lost him. Even after the surgery yesterday, we had been hopeful that he would recover. My boy, who had lived with me for over seven years, has passed on.
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The incident occurred when Paul, a JSS 1 student at Urban Secondary School in Area N, World Bank Housing area of Owerri, jumped over the school fence to retrieve the ball that had entered the landlord’s property.
The landlord, identified the proprietor of Par Excellence School, a private school located in Area N, World Bank Housing Estate, Owerri, Imo State, according to local media reports.
He has been arrested by operatives of the Imo State Police Command for allegedly attempting to murder the student who was trying to retrieve the ball from his school grounds.
Eyewitness shares what happened
An eyewitness who was present at the time of the incident, told our correspondent that the incident occurred when students at Urban Secondary School were observing their sports break on Monday.
He narrated the following as quoted by Nigerian website BluePrint:
While the boy was playing ball with his mates, they kicked the ball which mistakenly fell into the school premises of Par Excellence School which shares the same fence with the boy’s school. The boy, a JSS 1 student, moved towards the fence and climbed up, hoping to jump into the man’s school from there to get the ball. But on sighting him, the proprietor took his pump action gun and shot the boy two times on the leg and buttocks and he fell down from the fence.
Almost immediately, people around there, including the boy’s fellow students, started shouting and rushed the boy to hospital. It was later that the police were called in to arrest the Par Excellence proprietor whom it was gathered, was living outside the country before he came back a few years ago.
Despite undergoing surgery, Paul’s condition worsened, and he later died from his injuries.
The X-ray had initially shown no bullet in his body, but doctors later discovered that his bowel movements were blocked, which led to the surgery.
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The spokesperson for the Imo Police Command, DSP Henry Okoye, confirmed the incident and the arrest of the suspect responsible for the shooting.