A 16-year-old student, Paul, has passed away just 24 hours after undergoing surgery for a gunshot wound.
Paul was shot by a landlord on Monday for simply retrieving a ball that had entered the landlord’s premises during a school football game.
Paul’s guardian, Mr Jonathan Odikanwa, confirmed the heartbreaking news, stating that the medical team at the Specialist Hospital in Umuguma, Owerri, lost Paul on Thursday afternoon.
“He has passed away. My son has passed away. The doctors just said they lost him,” Odikanwa wailed in a voice note sent to The Punch.
“Even after the surgery yesterday, we had been hopeful that he would come around. My boy, who had lived with me for over seven years, had passed on.”
The incident occurred when Paul, a JSS 1 student at Urban Secondary School in Area N, World Bank Housing area of Owerri, jumped over the school fence to retrieve the ball, which had entered the landlord’s property.
The landlord, whose identity has not been disclosed, shot Paul in the waist, leaving him critically injured.
Despite undergoing surgery, Paul’s condition deteriorated, and he succumbed to his injuries.
The X-ray, according to the Guardian, had not shown the bullet in his body, but doctors discovered that his bowel movements were impeded, necessitating the surgery.
The spokesperson for the Imo Police Command, DSP Henry Okoye, confirmed the incident and the arrest of the man responsible for the shooting.
