Killing sparks Bogia riot

By JAYNE SAFIHAO

A village has been razed to the ground as a result of the gruesome killing of a Grade 3 student from the Asarumba Care Centre in Bogia last Saturday, The National reports.
Eyewitnesses and Bogia Mayor Felix Bangai said the 11-year-old boy and his teenage brother left early in the morning to look for coconuts.
He said they had walked to the border of Kalilat village, the last village after Bogia.
While trying to husk coconuts there, the brothers were ambushed by a group of Kalilat youths who shouted at them to leave. The elder brother sensing danger ran ahead of the younger one.
Unable to catch up, Junior Bari Gumai of Dangale village, Manam, died while running, speared in the back with a fishing gun. The metal fishing spear had a thick metal tip fixed with a hook.
The gang then took the boy’s body to the beach, burnt the face to make it unrecognisable and then gutted the corpse with a bush knife.
But about 200 relatives of the deceased then marched onto Kalilat village, razing everything in front of them.
They burnt houses and slaughtered animals.
Kalilat villagers then set up roadblocks at three sections of the road, with women and children forced to walk while vehicles were stopped from going to or from Bogia.
But Snr Constable Adam Yawing, the man in charge of the North Coast Road highway patrol saved the day by disbanding the angry Kalilat youths while asking for the surrender of the killers.
An auxiliary policeman and community leader Joe Viaken said they were turned upon by the men from Kalilat when they tried to intervene.
“We were being shot at with fishing guns. Almost all of them were armed and didn’t respect the law,” he said.
“They shouted abuse at us and used the cover of women and children at the roadblock to attack us.
“One spear landed in the car nearly killing the acting district administrator. We will be reporting the matter to the provincial police commander,” he said.
Viaken said the situation was still tense yesterday after the burial of the boy.
Asarumba care centre spokesman Nelson Mambote has lashed out at the government and is appealing for the government to look at relocating them to a neutral place.
“This is the third death so far since we have been placed here in 2006.
“The first was of a small boy. The Rarin community of Bogia killed and ate the child, cannibal fashion; the second was of a mother and child while out gardening and this is the third.
“Enough is enough, we can­not go on like this,” he said.