Mourners reject police report

Mourners are rejecting a police report that claims that a five – year – old boy Oliver Brown allegedly died from suffocation in a faulty car parked in a fence, staging a non – violent protest on Capitol Hill in Monrovia in a quest for government to order a conduct of an autopsy on the victim’s corpse.

“And then the sudden decay of the body, the body was discovered from the car, I think you can see the photo there. From the car to the funeral home, few hours the body just decayed like this,” Ms. Siah Tandapolie, spokesperson for the protesting mourners told the NewDawn newspaper Tuesday, 30 January outside the Liberia National Police (LNP) Headquarters.

She alleges that on the day they called the police upon discovering little Oliver’s corpse in the car parked in a fence in Logan Town on Bushrod Island, the body was okay and could be recognized. But she says they are dissatisfied over its sudden decay upon police intervention, especially a justification given by police that it was a decomposition from the body bag and stuff like that.

Ms. Tandapolie says little Oliver went missing on Friday, 12 January and after some days, was found dead in a car on Quiah Street in Logan Town on Tuesday, 16 January in a yellow Nissan Extera Jeep that police say is owned by one Alfred B. Kollie (alais Big Boy), a resident of New Kru Town.

She raises argument that people are residing in the fence in which the car in question was parked, claiming that the fence was not a place where the late Oliver used to go to play.

“The fence is not a place that oliver used to go and play; he never used to go and play there because the fence has never been opened to public. The fence always locked. To enter inside they will have to open the fence from within,” she says.

Ms. Tandapolie says they are not satisfied with the police report that the boy died from suffocation, adding, “we are saying no.” She wonders how did the child get in the fence that according to her is very tall and is always locked, claiming that people don’t easily go around it.

She says three of the car’s doors couldn’t open, and the only one that could open could only be opened from outside, thus raising suspicion that the anus area of the body may have been tampered with.

A police report claims that a post mortem examination conducted by the County Coroner of Montserrado revealed that the child may have died from suffocation and all the body parts were intact. It says the investigation could not establish any criminality into the death of the five – year – old minor, claiming that the death was a result of negligence on the part of the owner of the vehicle and the mother of the child.

Police are contending that the car owner left the car unattended to, and the mother of the child allegedly failed to provide parental care for her minor child. Concerning the condition of the vehicle, police say they observe that only one of the four doors could open from outside, but not from inside. They say the other three doors were partly damaged and could not easily open, except force is applied.

By Winston W. Parley