Residents of Quarter Five in Bomaka neighbourhood in Buea in the South West Region on April 3 evening lived terrible moments when armed robbers attacked a private home and two nearby provision stores.
The first victim, one Sylvester Foretia, an education inspector, suffered severe corporal injuries on the hand and head as well as material and financial losses to the bandits. According to him, about six armed men gained sudden access into his sitting room through the unlocked back door by 8 pm while he and his family were watching television.
The suspected thieves then held him at gun point while his colleagues pulled out cello tapes and quickly tied some of their victims’ legs, hands and mouths. The victims were then ordered to remain quiet lest they be shot or killed. The suspected robbers reportedly collected all mobile phones and proceeded to ask Foretia for money, the keys of his car and laptop computers, as well as other items, which they made away with.
Because the thieves overstayed their visit and continued molesting their victims, Foretia gathered courage and engaged one of them in a scuffle. As a result, he was shot on the head and received a deep knife-drive on the arm. Seeing the husband bleeding profusely, Foretia’s wife and daughter began shouting, putting the thieves in fright that neighbours would be alerted.
They fled the home only to resurface in a nearby provision store where, at gun point, they seized money from storekeepers and grabbed the keys of a new motorbike from the owner who was having a drink. Eyewitnesses reported that some used the motorbike to flee while others escaped on foot in different directions. The same sources said the hoodlums fired gunshots into the air before leaving the scene to dissuade people from chasing them.
The police was alerted late and only reached the scene after the bandits had fled. Investigations are in progress as the police are bent on fishing out the men.
