2 arrested for killing Uber cab driver

Two armed robbery suspects – Simon Tyozemda, 27, a Benue State indigene, and Lucky Friday, 24, from Delta State – who were arrested for killing an Uber cab driver have confessed to forming their gang while separately serving a two-year jail term. Aside killing an Uber cab driver and selling off his vehicle, a Toyota […]

Two armed robbery suspects – Simon Tyozemda, 27, a Benue State indigene, and Lucky Friday, 24, from Delta State – who were arrested for killing an Uber cab driver have confessed to forming their gang while separately serving a two-year jail term.

Aside killing an Uber cab driver and selling off his vehicle, a Toyota Camry, the Lagos police command said the suspects were on the verge of stealing another Uber cab when they were arrested by operatives of the command’s Rapid Response Squad (RRS).

The Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Imohimi Edgal, who paraded the suspects yesterday at the Command Headquarters, Ikeja, said the two men were arrested on Wednesday March 14, 2018 with two long knives hidden inside an Uber cab, a Toyota Camry saloon registration number APP 145 EE. The police chief alleged the suspects had planned to kill the cab driver and steal his vehicle.

According to Edgal, Tyozemda had, through his girlfriend’s Uber app, ordered the taxi at about 11.00pm sometime last week. But the suspects’ plan, he alleged, was to lure the Uber driver to a desolate location, kill him and take away his Toyota Camry vehicle.

He added that the suspects were taking the driver to a lonely place on the Lekki-Epe expressway, Lagos, when the vehicle was stopped by RRS officers for a stop-and-search.

Edgal said, “The officers noticed one of the suspects seated at the back of the vehicle hiding a long knife. Investigation revealed that the two men are ex-convicts released between December 2017 and January 2018 from the Kirikiri prison and had, sometime in February 2018, in a similar manner snatched a Taxify Toyota Corolla with registration number FST 663 EZ along the Badore Road, Ajah, Lagos, at about 2am after killing its driver.”

The Toyota Corolla was said to have been sold to 41-year-old Mohammed Usman for N350,000. Usman, the police Commissioner explained, had only paid N100,000 and had intended to move the vehicle to Jigawa State when an RRS Decoy Team arrested him.

In his confessional statement to the police, Tyozemda, an erstwhile security guard turned stylist in Badore said, “I met my colleague, Lucky Friday, in Kirikiri Prison. We became friends and when I was released I gave him the number of my brother. When he was released, I promised him I was going to assist him to resettle properly. Since then, we have been working and operating together.

“Our first operation was where we killed the driver of the Toyota Corolla. He was a Taxify driver. I stabbed the guy in the stomach twice and dropped him off the vehicle on the road in Badore, Ajah, at about 2am. We threw away the knives and bought new ones for the fresh operation we were arrested for.

“It was the same business that took me to the Kirikiri prison. I was introduced to it by Michael. Unfortunately for me, I was arrested while Michael escaped. I spent four months behind bars. It is sad I’m being arrested again over the same business.”

Eko Trust learnt that the police discovered the remains of the Taxify driver, Godfrey Ovie, the next day he was killed.

Also arrested with the suspects were one John ThankGod, 25, who was described as the middleman that introduced the gang to Usman, the alleged buyer of Ovie’s Toyota Corolla.