Residents of Egbu Umuenem, Otolo Nnewi in Anambra State are still in shock over the death of male twins, Peter and Paul, aged six, whose lifeless bodies were found in an abandoned deep freezer in their own apartment yesterday.
A source told Sunday Sun that Peter and Paul returned from school on Friday evening, and went to their mother’s shop, some metres away from their apartment in a one-storey building in the community.
According to the source, their mother told them to go home and remove their school uniforms and then come back to the shop to take their food.
The children went to their apartment to undress as directed by their mother, according to the source, but could not quickly return to their mother’s shop as she expected.
After a while their mother could no longer wait and had to go home to find out why they were wasting time to come back to the shop to have their food only to see an empty apartment without the children.
Meanwhile, their father, Mr Nwachukwu Onwe, an automobile mechanic, from Ebonyi State was said to be at his workshop when all these were happening.
Their mother was said to have with her husband when he later came back home continued to ask from house to house if anybody saw their twins. But there was no result till nightfall when the couple with some neighbours decided to continue the search at daybreak.
When a thorough search was conducted at the couple’s apartment at dawn (yesterday morning) an abandoned freezer was opened, eyewitnesses said, and behold the lifeless bodies of the twins were found there, stone dead.
The couples were still perplexed as to who must have robbed them of the only male children they had, according to neighbours.
Sunday Sun gathered that occupants of the building were earlier given a quit notice except the family of the victims and one other tenant who packed in newly. It was alleged that some of the sacked tenants had not completely packed out of the building.
Reacting to the incident, the leader of the community, Chief Afam Obi Ekosi, Obi Egbu Umuenem, Otolo, said it was an abomination to witness such a thing in his domain.
He noted that an incident like that had never happened at the community before.
He said that the community was thrown into agony by that occurrence as he corroborated the sequence of how the incident occurred as narrated by sources earlier.
“We are dumbfounded. We heard that the children were pupils of a nursery and primary school around us here. I was surprised how that small freezer contained the twins. It is suspected that they might have been strangled to death before squeezing them inside the small freezer.
“Whoever did that must dearly pay for it because this is to dent my community. We have never recorded this kind of crime in this community before. The kind of crime we record is house breaking and all that, not this kind. I’m not happy that this is happening in my community. We have invited the police. If it should be investigated, it is in the hands of the police. If it will not be investigated, it is in the hands of God. And God knows who did it. The perpetrator will not go unpunished,” the Obi said.
When contacted, the Police Public Relations Officer, Anambra State Police Command, Mr Haruna Muhammed (SP), confirmed the incident, saying that the police would do their investigation.