Before Brice Yamba got missing, he played the peep, hide-and-seek that sent him hiding under an unknown vehicle suggestively belonging to abductors.
A baby, who reportedly left his parents’ New Bell home in the afternoon of Thursday, September 23, for an unknown destination, was found slain last Friday at Bonaberi, Douala. Brice Yamba, 5, was among numerous children who played the peep, hide-and-seek past dusk. That fateful Thursday the baby, even by night time, could not return to the house as customarily. Yamba’s elder siblings ignited a rampant search for the child around the playground, and then door-to-door, beginning with Hausa quarter, then extending to other neighbourhoods unless to no avail. The entire family, including Yamba’s parents, spent the rest of Monday staying up past dawn looking for the baby from neighbourhood to the other.
Other children whom Brice Yamba reportedly played together told the family since Brice ran into hiding himself under a yet standing vehicle, they couldn’t find him again. A 10-year-old girl, who participated in the late afternoon games, disclosed to the family and reporters on Wednesday that for two times she admonished Yamba not to go under a vehicle. “He continued going there, but later we didn’t find him again. We don’t usually do hide-and-seek because my mother said it takes some children far from the compound. We played peep-and-boo before Brice started with hide-and-seek.”
Just Friday noon, the baby was uncovered, in parts, among garbage by a small stream off major habitation in Mabanda. The frightening experience soon sent the news wild. Having stormed the scene, Yamba family identified the baby by dint of clothes and shoes the baby put on before leaving the house that fateful day. The baby’s head was found half detached from the neck, visibly indicative of slaughter. Hands and genitals were absent from the main body and from the surrounding, suggesting that certain organs were deliberately removed. Blood littered the garbage heap and the rest of the decomposing body colonised by flies. According to a New Bell resident, Yamba’s mother collapsed at the macabre scene, apparently, from shocks. However, it was rumoured that the unknown vehicle under which Brice purportedly hid could have belonged to some abductors, who whisked the baby several kilometres to Bonaberi. A gendarme officer who was present last Wednesday at the family residence in New Bell said the act smacks of the existence of human organ marketing.
