Relatives go wild, attempt to lynch two journalists over death of husband, wife, three children in Benue
SPOTLIGHT
TWO journalists, Mrs. Rose Ejembi of The Sun and John Charles of Punch newspapers, yesterday escaped death by the whiskers in their attempt to gather further information from families, colleagues and other relatives of a housewife, the late Mrs. Rachael Adetsav, who allegedly killed her husband, three children before stabbing herself to death last Friday.
The ugly incident would have happened again after the two journalists visited the residence of the deceased family, the school of the deceased children, and had gone to Makurdi local government secretariat where both husband and wife were working before their death. While at the local government secretariat, some of the deceased colleagues and friends spoke with the reporters, informing them that the family of the late Nicholas Adetsav were at the secretariat but in a meeting with officials of the Nigerian Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE).
After a patient wait, the reporters spoke with the NULGE secretary, Comrade Mandu Igber. On sighting the two women who were identified as family members of Adetsav, the reporters walked up to them and sought to have audience with them not knowing that they would be attacked.
According to one of the attacked reporters, "as we approached them and on discovering that we were journalists, one of the women flared up and started accusing all journalists of writing rubbish about her family without consulting them. To this we urged her to calm down saying we came to them now to hear their own side of the story since it was the police that first broke the news to the public in Makurdi."
In a twinkle of an eye, the family mobbed the two reporters and went ahead to dispossess the Punch reporter of his gadget while they were trying to escape the mob action. It took the intervention of some council workers who whisked the Sun reporter away through a window, while the family held the Punch correspondent hostage.