A 17-year-old student in Plateau State, Elijah Anthony, has been arrested by operatives of the State Police Command for allegedly killing his neighbour’s five-year-old child after collecting N400,000 in ransom from the victim’s parents.

Anthony, a Senior Secondary student of Manret High School in Angul D community, Jos South Local Government Area of Plateau State, was among 39 other suspects paraded for various offences at the police command’s headquarters in Jos on Thursday.

In an interview with The PUNCH, Anthony, who confessed to killing the five-year-old neighbour identified as Dawom Pam, said, “They sent his (victim’s) elder brother to buy something and the little boy was behind him. So, I and my friend carried the boy and hid him somewhere in an uncompleted building

“Later, the parents of the boy came looking for him and I also pretended and joined them in the search for their missing child but I did not take them to where the boy was hidden.

“Later we demanded N5 million, but we were able to get N400,000. But five days later, the boy was killed. I was the one that killed him because I fear he might tell his parents that I was the one that kidnapped him if we had released him”.

The suspect, who expressed regrets over the incident, blamed his action on the hardship going on in the country

He said, “I was in my house when the police came and arrested me. It is the hardship that drove me into kidnapping and killing. I was supposed to write WAEC this year but I didn’t. Please, forgive me.”

The State Commissioner of Police, Okoro Julius Alawari, who paraded Anthony and 39 other suspects, disclosed that the corpse of the five-year-old child had been recovered from a swampy place near the uncompleted building where he was dumped by the suspects and handed over to his parents for burial.

He said all 39 suspects would be prosecuted when investigations were concluded.

Too bad