Two mortuary attendants, Olusegun and Olusesi Owamade ; and five gravediggers, Razaki Abesopiti, Okeowo Kazeem, Babatunde Giwa, Ade Aliu and Musiliu Yakubu, are currently in police net in Lagos for allegedly dismembering a corpse.
According to the Lagos State Police Command, the accused work as mortuary and cemetery attendants at the St. Raphael’s Devine Mercy Specialist Hospital Mortuary in Ikorodu.
Parading the suspects before newsmen on Friday November 23rd, the state commissioner of police, Edgal Imohimi, said one Athony Lawani, lodged a complain to the police that the body of his sister, 51-yea- old Mary Ehinlaiye, which was deposited at the morgue, was nowhere to be found. He had gone to the mortuary to collect his sister’s body for burial but the attendant’s could not present the body to him.
It was later discovered that the mortuary attendants had erroneously handed over the body to another family.
“However, one Olusesi Owamade, aged 41 years, a mortuary attendant, with the approval of his supervisor, Michael Olusegun, aged 65 years, erroneously released the corpse to another family. When the relations of the deceased woman came for the release of the corpse for burial, it was nowhere to be found. At this juncture, it dawned on the mortuary attendants that they had released the corpse to the wrong persons. To recover the corpse, five grave diggers working at Sabo Cemetery, Ikorodu were contracted by the mortuary attendants to exhume the corpse for onward handover to its owners,” he said.
Edgal said the suspects, Michael Olusegun and Olusesi Owamade who are mortuary attendants, and the five gravediggers identified as Razaki Abesopiti, Okeowo Kazeem, Babatunde Giwa, Ade Aliu and Musiliu Yakubu, conspired among themselves and dismembered the body of the deceased by cutting off the two wrists and heart for a yet-to-be determined reason.
