Panic gripped residents of Ibadan on Thursday morning after a Junior Secondary School 2 student of Monarch Model College was reportedly kidnapped by armed men in a brazen attack.
Eyewitness accounts revealed that the masked abductors, driving a vehicle without number plates, allegedly trailed the girl’s mother before striking as she stopped to drop her daughter off. The gunmen, said to be armed with a double-barrel gun, reportedly fired shots into the air to disperse bystanders and punctured the tyre of the mother’s Toyota RAV4 with Lagos registration number KRD 350 GP.
The student, who reportedly resisted, was forcefully dragged into the kidnappers’ vehicle. The suspects thereafter fled the scene through the Challenge area, leaving residents in shock.
The incident was reported at the Orita Challenge Police Station, with officers arriving at the scene alongside the victim’s mother around 8:50 a.m. However, when contacted, the Oyo State Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Olusola Olayinka Ayanlade, said he had not yet been briefed on the matter as of press time.
As of the time of filing this report, authorities had yet to provide details regarding the kidnappers’ demands or the whereabouts of the abducted student.