According to eye-witnesses, including some of the persons who rushed Madam Okosun , an Edo State indigene, to the Hospital, the woman would have survived if the patrol team had immediately rushed her to the hospital. She was said to have lost a great amount of blood before help could come.Some neighbours of Madam Okosun who spoke with LEADERSHIP Friday said she boarded the taxi at the Dei Dei Mopol Barracks Junction, also called Mohammed Abubakar Barracks, where she resides. They said she worked in the Barracks as a cleaner after she was deployed from the Force headquarters where she also worked as a cleaner.According to the neighbours, that fateful day, Madam Okosun was heading to the force headquarters to supply bottle groundnuts and vegetable for some senior police officers who were her regular customers when she met her untimely death.“The woman left her work place in Mopol Barrack that fate Tuesday, September 2 and was heading to the Force headquarters in Area 11.She boarded a vehicle from Mopol Barrack junction before Dei Dei Junction on the way to Zuba. As she was coming she stopped at Berger junction and was removing her wares from the boot of the car when the driver saw a police patrol van coming after him.“As they were coming after the taxi driver, out of fright the driver put the vehicle in reverse gear as he attempted to escape arrest. He knocked down the woman who was trying to remove her goods from the boot. The vehicle ran over her and left her in the pool of her blood.“Seeing what they had just done, the patrol team quickly drove away, leaving the driver who they were chasing to also escape. The woman lay there on the road for some time before we came to her rescue and rushed her to the National Hospital. She had lost so much blood but was still breathing, the eye witness said.The eye witness who said patrol teams were always harassing taxi drivers and chasing them whenever they find them parking at some places without giving any consideration the danger they posed to innocent road users. He called on the acting Inspector General of Police, IGP Suleiman Abba, to fish out the members of the patrol team and make a scapegoat of them.“These police patrol team and other patrol teams of the security agencies, including the Road Safety , the Civil Defence, the VIO and the Abuja Environmental Protection Agency are always in the habit of chasing taxi drives knowing fully well that drivers would not wait to be arrested. In the process they threaten the lives of other road users like they have just killed the lady,” he said.A neighbour of Madam Okosun who described her as a kind, loving and hardworking woman who she said was the caretaker of the compound where they lived said the entire neighbourhood had not been able to overcome the shock.One of madam Okosun’s daughters, Miss Rose Okosun, who spoke with LEADERSHIP Friday said after they learnt of the accident they rushed to the National Hospital with the help of one of the rescuers, where they were told she was placed on intensive care unit. She said at about 5 pm they were informed by the doctors that she lost so much blood before she was brought to the hospital and could not make it.Rose who said her father passed on in 2009 after retirement as Assistant Superintendent of Police ASP, told LEADERSHIP Friday that they went to the Utako Police station to find out the members of the patrol team which chased the driver but were told that the team may not have come from the station. According to the officers at the station, patrol teams from other parts of the FCT also come to the Berger junction and so it would be difficult to know where they came from.Rose said every attempt to find out the police station where the officers came from had proved abortive but insisted that the police authority could find out if they really want to know the patrol team which abandoned the their mother to bleed to death.When LEADERSHIP Friday contacted the FCT police Spokesman, Altine Daniels, she said it was not true that any police patrol team would see an accident victim and abandon the victim to die. According to her, the police patrol vans are labelled and could be identified through the inscriptions on them. She challenged anybody with evidence that it was a police patrol van that was chasing the driver who crushed the woman to death to come forward with evidence.
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