December 5, 2018
By Ijendu Iheaka
Abia State Police Commissioner, Chris Ezike on Wednesday said the police re-arrested friends of a man drowned at a swimming pool in Aba to deepen investigation and rule out foul play
A 20 year old man drowned at the swimming pool of a hotel on Margret Avenue in GRA, Aba, Abia state last Thursday.
The man who is a friend of the celebrator was said to have gone to swim at the hotel’s pool during their colleague’s birthday party but drowned in it leading to the arrest of their other friends at the event.
A Police source told our reporter that the youths numbering about 16 were first arrested on Thursday evening and released on Friday.
The source said their release came after preliminary investigations involving CCTV footage previews at the Central Police Station (CPS) Aba failed to link them to their colleague’s death.
However, our findings showed that State Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on Tuesday re-arrested and moved the boys to the state capital in Umuahia where they had remained detained until Wednesday.
Ezike said that the police was not in for a witch hunt but wanted to rule out every possibility of foul play in the death of the young man at the hotel’s swimming pool.
“You talked about CCTV footage. The footage did not show when the boy entered the pool. It only showed his body in the pool.
“We are looking at negligent act, we are looking at willful act. Willful acts are different from negligent acts but all or part can form the ingredients of a crime.
“So it is just the process of investigation that is going on. The matter is not an Aba matter because it involved homicide.
“When somebody has died, it elevates the discourse to a different level of investigation. We are not out to witch hunt anybody but in search of the truth”, he said.
Asked if following his promise to reduce human rights abuses he would stop the process of arresting suspects before investigating them as it is done in some other countries, Ezike said there are rules to obey.
“You obey the law and you obey the Constitution. The climes where you do not do that are different from ours.
“If you talk about the United States of America, they run a system where the prosecuting agencies are attached to the police.
“So more or less they are part of the investigation. It is not ours here. Secondly, they have virtually everything you will need in criminal investigation.
“They have the CCTV, they have the intelligence electronic devices. With all that they know when to go for arrest.
“But for us here, we start from the answer to the question. I wish we will get to where start from the question to the answer”, he said.
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