A high-tension armed robbery occurred in Ondo state, during which some dare-devil armed robbers, yesterday, ambushed and disarmed policemen escorting a bullion van, then carted away an unspecified amount of money.
The body of the bullion van and the escort vehicles were riddled with bullets, while their tyres were deflated by bullets.
Vanguard gathered that the incident occurred at about 4p.m. at Elemoso village in Ondo East council of Ondo State.
Beside the driver of the bullion van, who was seriously injured, the policemen escorting the van are yet to resurface from the bush they ran into when the robbers struck.
It was gathered that the bullion van was conveying an unspecified sum of money from the branches of one of the old generation banks in Ondo town to their headquarters in Akure when the hoodlums struck.
Some of the villagers said the robbers trailed the bullion van from Ondo town until it got to the village, where there were speed breaks, before attacking the van and the escort police vehicle.
The strike
Sources in the village said the driver of a red car pretended to overtake the bullion van, while it slowed down because of a speed break, only to block it and fire volleys of gunshots into the air.
The policemen, it was gathered, fled into the bush, following the robbers’ heavy fire power, leaving the two vehicles.
The robbers then broke into the bullion van.
The van is marked Lagos FST 945 AL, while the escort is registered PF 344 SPY.
Proprietor of a school in the area, who was driving a Sienna bus marked OSUN AA 733 FTD, was shot in the eye when he attempted to make a U-turn at the scene of the robbery.
Sources said the robbers, after carting large sum of money into their car, escaped through a village to Ile-Oluji.
Contacted, the state Police Commissioner, Isaac Eke, said conspiracy could not be ruled out in the ugly incident.
Eke told Vanguard that the policemen that escorted the bullion van did not book with Operation Unit of the state Police Command.
He said: “The information is still sketchy. We are trying to establish some things because the policemen that escorted the bullion were not booked with the operation unit. This shows that they are on illegal duties.
“The driver of the vehicle has come out of the bush and we are interrogating him. We suspect conspiracy in this matter.
“Our men are still chasing them and I want to assure members of the public that we will apprehend them.”
Meanwhile, about 20 mobile policemen have been deployed to comb the bushes, village and its surroundings.
One of the villagers interviewed said the sound of gunshots sent the villagers scampering for safety.
He said: “We thought Boko Haram people have arrived our village. Everybody ran into the bush.
We returned to find two bullet-riddled police vehicles on the expressway. It was then that we discovered that it might be a robbery incident.”
The incident caused heavy traffic gridlock along the ever busy Akure-Ondo Expressway.
At press time, policemen were still keeping vigil at the scene of the incident.
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