Ugochi Robert and Victor Richard were returning home from a private hospital on December 10, 2022, when policemen stopped and ordered them off a commercial motorcycle.

Ugochi, Richard’s girlfriend, recalled a policeman tapping Richard and asking that he get off and follow him to a Hilux vehicle where more policemen were waiting.

In a phone conversation with FIJ, Ugochi said Richard did as instructed, while she waited for him across the road from where the Hilux was parked.

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Moments after, “he came out of the vehicle and crossed as if he was coming to meet me, but he began running and the police started shooting”.

Richard died in that encounter, and at press time, his body was deposited in the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Owerri, Imo State. His family has been unable claim it.

Speaking with FIJ about the incident, Ugochi said, “We were coming back from a hospital where we both went to receive treatment. When we got to Number One Junction in Owerri, we saw policemen doing ‘stop and search’.

“We continued going on the motorcycle we boarded, but when we reached them, they asked us to stop. One policeman tapped my boyfriend on his back and ordered him to come down.

“I also got down and stood by the road while they crossed him to the other side where other policemen were waiting in a Hilux van.

“They collected his phone from him after he got down from the bike.

“Moments after he got into the vehicle, he came out and crossed as if he was coming to meet me, but he began running, and the police started shooting.

“They were still with his phone. I think he wanted to collect money from me to give them but decided to run instead.”

She said she ran for her life, and so did other residents of the area.

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Ugochi told FIJ she tried calling his phone number when she got to the house of a friend of his but was unable to reach him.

The next day, she and his friends went to hospitals to look for him but did not find him. They then went to the scene of the incident to ask residents if they saw him.

“One woman there told us the police shot someone,” Ugochi continued. “She described the victim, and this matched my boyfriend.”

She and his friends then went to the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Owerri, to complain, but the police told them there had been no reports of shooting or violence in that area and no arrests had been made.

She said the search party continued until they arrived FMC Owerri, where policemen brought in Richard’s dead body on December 10 and went with his mortuary tally.

However, the hospital was unable to identify the policemen or what command they came from.

“The family has tried following the matter, but nobody knows the policemen,” Ugochi added. “We cannot even get his body to bury because only the police can come with the tally.”

When FIJ called Comfort, Richard’s mother, she said had made attempts to find her son’s killers and recover the mortuary tally but had been unable to do so.

“I went there last week with a lawyer,” she told FIJ. “We were asking if we could take his body, but they said we needed to present the tally. We don’t have the tally, and we don’t know who has it.”

FIJ called Mike Abattam, spokesman for the Imo State Police Command, but he did not answer our calls at press time. He also did not respond to a text message sent to him.

Ojukwu is a reporter with FIJ in partnership with Report for the World, which matches local newsrooms with talented emerging journalists to report on under-covered issues around the globe.