Gunfire near Monrovia

A shootout over a land dispute on the Bright Farm, located on the outskirt of Monrovia left one person critically injured over the weekend as police effect arrests.

The news of the use of firearms over land disputes follows repeated warnings from various human rights groups including international partners that land dispute could be the next source of brutal violence here, after years of civil war that left over 200,000 Liberians dead.

The land ownership on and around the Bright Farm in Mount Barclay, along the Kakata-Monrovia highway, the center of evolving land crisis for some time now prompted the police to deploy details there in the past before redeploying the men to other areas.

Saturday February 27, 2016 shooting incident which left one local, Stephen Borbor critically wounded in the neck began when an owner of one of the disputed parcel of lands Pius Z. George armed with a writ of arrest took three officers of the police Emergency Response Unit or ERU on the farm to effect an arrest.

It is not clear what led to the shooting incident as police mount investigation. But what is certain is that the venue if the shooting incident is a new site, which is opened for sale to interested private land owners. It has houses and rubber trees on it which are being clear for the sale.

On Sunday, 28 February, police authorities issued a statement informing the public that they were carrying on investigation surrounding the incident. As at the time of issuing the statement on Sunday, Police Spokesman Sam Collins said victim Borbor who was shot in the neck was currently undergoing medical treatment at a local hospital in Monrovia.

The police investigation is yet to point to any suspect directly, but it says people of interest including the operation manager of the farm Pius Z. George who has been picked up. They are said to be undergoing interrogation by police investigators, as police are yet to establish circumstances surrounding the shooting.

Sources told this paper that the ERU officers who accompany Pius on the disputed land were not officially authorized to effect the writ issued by the court.

By Winston W. Parley-Edited by Othello B. Garblah