Kitwe’s Kapoto compound residents last night ran amok destroying property worth millions of kwacha after two Police officers from Riverside police station allegedly shot dead a 13-year-old girl.
And Copperbelt Police Chief, Antoneil Mutentwa, has disclosed that Police in Kitwe have arrested and charged Constable Rexson Banda and Sub Inspector, Africa Zulu, with murder.
The residents went on rampage destroying property that included the office of the local Neighbourhood community Watch and other shops at the Market after the alleged shooting of the girl identified as, Marvis Mwansa, at Kapoto market.
A check by ZANIS at the market found a ZAMBEEF outlet has been destroyed with its window panes completely shattered while meat products worth over K6.5 million were looted by the irate residents.
The Body of the deceased is lying at Kitwe Central Hospital Mortuary
Police chief Mr. Mutentwa told ZANIS in Kitwe today that Police were concerned that the two officers who allegedly shot the minor were not on duty and had no mandate to pursue drug dealers.
” As a Police we unreservedly condemn such acts especially that our officers acted outside the operational guidelines of the Police service.” said Mr Mutentwa.
He explained that the shooting incident happened when the two officers from Riverside Police Station went to Kapoto market to pursue a group of boys that were allegedly selling drugs at the market between 18 30 and 19 hours yesterday.
“The Boys who were allegedly selling drugs bolted after they saw Police approaching, hence the Officers decided to open fire in a crowed place in an effort to apprehend the culprits which was wrong.” said Mr Mutentwa.
Mr Mutentwa said the two officers have been arrested and charged because they did not follow procedure in pursuing drug traffickers and that there was no evidence to indicate that their lives were in danger for them to resort to firing live bullets.
He said Police would ensure that that the law prevails in the matter.
And one of the residents, Amon Banda, told ZANIS that some Police officers have allegedly been obtaining money from the unsuspecting drug dealers at Kapoto Market.
” The Police Officers have been coming here for a long time now to harasse these drug dealers who give them money to elude arrests” said Banda.
And Father to the deceased, Abel Mwansa, welcomed the arrest of the two Police Officers and called for justice to prevail over the death of his daughter.
” I don’t understand why these people decided to Kill my daughter, please let thelaw take its course on this matter” said Mwansa.
ZANIS
I think the effort taken by our IG Ephraim Mateyo to retrain the Police is a perfect timing and desreve full support from the goverment. The transformation of the police from a force to a service has not materialised at all. If anything, we have seen the police using more force were it is not even due than rendering a service. ZPS stinks with a lot of ignorance and it is good that the IG is aware of this stuation and the goverment should give him full support in retraining .The entire ZPS requires a postmortem to weed out the ignorance that has dorminated our police. It hard to understand why a police should just open fire at a non violent crowd of people. Were these two policemen in their right frames of their mind or under the influence of some drugs which they went to persue? The goverment should make sure that it employs people who are mentally upright and offer them right training.Please upgrade the police academy and retrain our police so that they are service oriented.
I agree with all that mwinepab0 has written, just to add on, if indeed the girl was completely innocent and shot just like that, the govermnet should take it upon themselves to compesate the family and take care of the burial of the girl, the fact that theres a problem is the responsibility of the goverment. its awful for a 13 year old girl to die in cold blood.
mwinepabo, atleast u’ve added value to this topic.ps
offer solutions don’t only be good at condeming.
In the last week or so the IG was talking about enhanced Police service and re-training of the Police. This should be speeded up as there area lot of trigger happy cops out there. The loss of that child is unfotrunate and was really unnecessary. There was completely no need to have gone with arms in such a neighbourhood.
Another issue of concern is the riots that are becoming common in Zambia, while it is appreciated that people should vent their anger, as that shop keeper said, why then did they have to destroy his property plus those of others who had completely nothing to do with the shooting. This says one thing, people are angry in Zambia and they will take advantage of anything to vent their fraustrations. They wil do anything to show the system that they are not happy. That is why, when an incident happens we see riots and peoperty is damaged. I would commend the Police for not firing any live bullets when dispersing the crowd as that would have triigered more violence.
The shooting of a young girl is very unfortunate, however, this is not something Zambians did not envision. The Zambian police have failed to bring about law and order in the country due to lack of discipline within their ranks. The attorney general, in Zambia, has always been weak.
utujilijili ba police