There was pandemonium in Akure, Ondo State, on Wednesday as a policeman who was intervening to save a woman from a mob after her vehicle killed one commercial motorcycle operator, further killed another Okada rider and a passenger in the crowd.
The woman was driving a bus when she hit a commercial motorcycle rider who died instantly.
The accident provoked spontaneous uprising by commercial motorcycle riders at the scene who barricaded the major road.
The mob were in the act of killing the woman when the police on duty within the area intervened.
The Okada riders turned their anger on the policemen which forced one of the officers to fire warning shots into air, which incidentally killed another commercial motorcycle operator and a passenger.
The warning gunshots into the air was intended to create space for the policemen to escape from the chaotic scene but it precipitated another incident.
The Police Public Relations Officers of the Ondo State Police Command, DSP Funmilayo Odunlami, disclosed that the angry mob, thereafter, attacked the other policeman who escaped from the scene with severe wounds.
The PPRO had highlighted: “It was a road accident in which a woman driving a car hit and killed a commercial motorcyclist. Then a crowd gathered at the scene and was trying to mob the woman.
“The policeman then approached the scene to disperse the crowd and rescue the woman, but the angry crowd mobbed him. It was while he was trying to rescue himself that he shot into the air and incidentally, he misfired.”
A patrol team from the Police Division Headquarters in Akure, later arrived at the scene to disperse the furious protesters who had already set a bonfire on the major highway, after much persuasion.