Student bags 1 year jail term for theft

An Abuja Magistrates’ Court sitting at Life Camp, on Thursday, sentenced a 26-year-old student, Richard Kure, to one year imprisonment for stealing his roommate’s mobile phone valued at N67,000. The Magistrate, Chinyere Nwecheonwu, sentenced Kure, a resident of Kuje, Abuja, to one year in a correctional centre after he pleaded guilty to the charge of […]

An Abuja Magistrates’ Court sitting at Life Camp, on Thursday, sentenced a 26-year-old student, Richard Kure, to one year imprisonment for stealing his roommate’s mobile phone valued at N67,000.

The Magistrate, Chinyere Nwecheonwu, sentenced Kure, a resident of Kuje, Abuja, to one year in a correctional centre after he pleaded guilty to the charge of theft and begged the court for leniency.

Nwecheonwu, however, gave the convict an option to pay a fine of N40,000.

Earlier, the Prosecutor, ASP Peter Ejike, told the court that one Ebenezer Yakubu of Jabi, Abuja, reported the matter at the Life Camp Police Station on June 6.

The prosecutor alleged that the complainant met with the defendant, who is his friend, and decided to accommodate him for a few days because he was stranded and had nowhere to go.

Ejike said the defendant stole the complainant’s phone valued at N67,000 and fled to an unknown destination.

He said during police investigation, the defendant’s girlfriend was used to place a call to him and that he was eventually traced to a hotel located at Nyanya, Abuja.

The prosecutor added that during the investigation, the defendant confessed to committing the crime, but that he had sold off the phone and that all efforts to recover it proved abortive.

He said the offence contravened Section 288 of the Penal Code.

When the charge was read, Kure pleaded guilty and urged the court to tamper justice with mercy. (NAN)