A yet to be identified man, on Sunday, allegedly hung himself from a Gmelina tree at Marina, Lagos.
Police officers and residents struggled to bring down the corpse from the tree, hours after it was discovered, after which it was conveyed to the hospital.
Eye witnesses said the elderly man, who in death still adorned his traditional Yoruba cap, was noticed on the tree during the Christmas celebration.
“It was a boy and a girl who were drinking juice under the tree that noticed him when his urine landed on their heads,” said Richard Amsu, who lives nearby.
“We saw them running with the boy in front and we thought the boy had robbed the girl,” Mr. Amsu said.
“But when we stopped the girl to find out if we should go after the boy, she said there was a body on one of the trees.
The deceased donned a green native dress which made him difficult to be sighted.
“We got there, looked at all the coconut trees there because we thought it would be one of them but we didn’t see anything,” Mr. Amsu said.
The body was, however, discovered on Monday morning and a crowd immediately gathered at the foot of the tree. Police officers at the scene were confused.
Hours later, a ladder was brought and a youth in the area volunteered to climb the tree and cut the hanging rope.
An onlooker suggested to one of the police officers present to search the pockets of the deceased for any means of identification.
“You want me to put my hand inside a body that is smelling?” the officer asked.
“We too are human beings,” he added.
An ambulance of the Lagos State Environment Health Monitoring Unit arrived and, the official, after requesting that the police officers “find him something”; agreed to convey the corpse to Isolo General Hospital’s mortuary.
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