… ‘I had to save herbalist from dying’
SUSPECTED serial killer, Sunday Shodipe, has said he escaped from police custody to save the herbalist who was detained with him from dying.
The unrepentant suspect, who was rearrested by the Oyo State Police Command, said the herbalist, who he had earlier claimed to be working for, told him he had to escape from the police cell to kill more people because there was a need to appease some spirits that were tormenting him (the herbalist) with blood.
In this regard, he also confessed that, after his escape, he had killed another woman, one Mrs. Oladeji Funmilayo.
The suspect was paraded alongside 32 other criminals by the Commissioner of Police in Oyo State, Joe Nwachuwu Enwonwu.
The Point had reported that the suspect, who had been linked to serial killings in the Akinyele area of Ibadan, was first arrested on July 17, and paraded along with two others, at the Command’s Headquarters, Eleyele, Ibadan.
He was later remanded in police custody, after the last killing of one Olufunmilayo, around Ori Oke Olorunkunle, in Akinyele. Shodipe was however said to have escaped on August 11.
About six persons had been reportedly killed in cruel circumstances in the same area.
Explaining the circumstances surrounding his escape from custody, Shodipe said, “The herbalist with whom I was detained told me to escape in order to get blood to appease some spirits who were sucking his (herbalist) blood because he could no longer get the hard drinks and other things he normally used to offer sacrifice in the cell.
“When I escaped from Mokola Police cell, I went to do what Baba asked me to do to save him from dying. I went from Moniya, where I lived, to Akinyele, and used an object to hit the woman and blood gushed out. Then I recited what Baba always said I should recite, and mentioned his name. I disappeared as usual but I don’t know whether the woman died.”
The suspect, while reiterating that he did not possess any charm, said, “I don’t know what Baba was using me for. He said if not for my initial confession, both of us would have been free today.”
On how he escaped, Shodipe said, the herbalist had been telling one officer, ‘Officer Funsho’, to open the gate for them to go and have their bath, but that the officer did not answer him.
“Baba then told the officer that he needed to drink gin to prevent spirits from draining his blood, but the officer did not answer him still. When the police later allowed me to go and have my bath in the evening, at about 7 pm, I escaped and I went to Akinyele to kill another woman,” he recounted.
The police commissioner said Shodipe admitted inflicting machete injury on the woman’s head and left her in a pool of blood.
“The victim was brutally attacked by the notorious killer and was rushed to the University College Hospital, Ibadan, where she later gave up the ghost,” he said.
The CP said the notorious killer was detained at Mokola, owing to the congestion at the Correctional Centre, but added, “We are going to ensure that this time around, he is kept in the Correctional Centre where he should have been kept initially.”
