The Ondo State Police Command has arrested a 34-year-old father of seven, Monday Elela, for allegedly killing and burying his son in a shallow grave over ‘habitual’ theft.
Elela, a bricklayer and farmer, in connivance with his wife, who is on the run, purportedly committed the crime at their home in the Ajowa Akoko area of the state.
While being paraded along with some suspected criminals at the state police headquarters in Akure, the suspect, who admitted to beating his deceased son, denied killing him.
According to him, his deceased 14-year-old son, Tope Elela, had been a regular visitor to police stations and Amotekun Corps cells due to constant theft that had been embarrassing the family.
He said: “Out of my seven children, he has been the one giving us problems. All he did was break into people’s houses. He is known around where we live, and he has been arrested many times by the police, but he won’t change.
“The last time he did it, Amotekun operatives arrested him, and they took him into their custody. But while in the custody of the Amotekun corps, he escaped through a little opening created for air ventilation in the cell. He broke the iron bars and jumped the fence to escape.
“We were at home when the Amotekun people called us and said our son had escaped. We began to look for him along with some Amotekun men. But we later found him where he had gone to hide, and we took him home.
“On getting home, we only spanked him with our hands for his wrongdoings and the embarrassment he had been causing us. But we didn’t realize that he was already injured while with the Amotekun people. After we spanked him, he ate his food, took his bath, and went to sleep. It was at daybreak that we instructed his younger brother to wake him so that we could all go to the farm. It was when he didn’t respond that we realized he had died.
“I quickly rushed to where he was sleeping along with his mother, and we confirmed that he had already died. So, we took his body and buried it in our backyard. We didn’t kill him. He is number three among my children.”
