Autopsy report of woman killed during protest counters police account

The post-mortem report of Jumoke Oyeleke, the woman who was shot dead during a Yoruba nation rally in Lagos on July 3, has revealed that she died of “hemopericardium, disruption to the heart and lungs and missile injury to the chest.”

The autopsy was carried out at the Department of Pathology and Forensic of the Lagos State Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) by S.S Soyemi, a doctor, the report says.

The autopsy report confirmed that the 25-year-old woman died at 11:30 a.m., during the protest.

The police had attempted to disperse the peaceful rally at the Gani Fawehnimi Freedom Park in Ojota by firing guns and tear gas canisters into the air.

Witnesses at the rally had told PREMIUM TIMES that the deceased was hit in the back as she, alongside others, was fleeing from the scene of the police shootings.

But the police had swiftly issued a statement saying its officers never fired a “single live bullet” at the rally.

According to the statement, the deceased’s body “was found wrapped and abandoned at a distance, far from Ojota venue of the rally, behind MRS Filling Station, inward Maryland, on the other side of the venue, with dried blood stains suggesting that the corpse is not fresh. After a close look at the corpse, a wound suspectedly sustained from a sharp object was seen on it.”

Justice

The deceased’s uncle, Afolabi Wasiu, told PREMIUM TIMES on Monday evening confirmed that the family has received the autopsy report.

“What they said was that they couldn’t find the bullet in her body. That the bullet went out, that is what the autopsy is saying,” he said.

He said the police were also yet to give the family closure concerning their investigation of the incident.

He added that when they went to request for her body on the same day of the incident, the police commander at Ojota asked them to “calm down for them to be able to detect the kind of bullet that penetrated through her, that they were not the only security agencies in that vicinity at the time, that they cannot detect that this was what happened.”

“They said when they start the investigation, they will check the bullet and the number.”

Mr Wasiu said with the absence of the bullet, he doubts the culprit would be found.

“We know how this government works, they have played the game already and have been telling lies, different lies, look at the mother, her brain is not stable,” he said.

Mortuary bills

On Sunday, Debo Adebayo, popularly known as Mr Macaroni, said on his Facebook page that he paid a visit to the family of the deceased.

According to him, “the government or police are yet to take any responsibility and the family have been left to saddle all the financial burdens from mortuary bills, to the autopsy, to bills for case treatment and the well-being of the entire family who has been abandoned.”

However, Mr Wasiu said the family were required by the police to pay a sum of N25,000 for transportation of the corpse for autopsy.

“They (CP Christopher Oyinsi at the state CID in Yaba ) told us to arrange an ambulance that will take the corpse from the mortuary to where they are going to do the autopsy and to bring the corpse back to the mortuary which we paid for. The transportation was N25,000 to and fro,” he said.

“We made the payments yesterday, that was why they took her to where they did the autopsy and they took her back.

“Initially they told us, we are going to pay for the mortuary but later when I started posting it (on social media) they later told us that we should not bother to pay.”

Burial

Mr Wasiu said that they had planned to bury Ms Oyeleke on Monday but their lawyer, Ernest Olaoluwa, advised against it.

“Our lawyer said we should not bury her yet. Because they need to get more information about the death, they said it is not just a death that will come and go like that,” he said.