Officer shoots teenager dead inside police station – Tete, Mozambique

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Officer shoots teenager dead inside police station – Tete, Mozambique

1:37 CAT | 22 Feb 2017

File photo / For illustration purposes only

A Republic of Mozambique policeman has shot a 17-year-old boy dead in broad daylight at the police station of Chingodzi’s Sansão Mutemba neighbourhood, causing great concern among the community.

Emanuel Bonifacio Rupia was shot in the chest at around 4 pm on Friday 17 February, the bullet exiting his back with considerable loss of blood.

After the shooting, PRM personnel from the station took the body to Tete Provincial Hospital, where they said they had found it abandoned in Nhartanda valley, far from the scene of his murder, the deceased’s father Bonifácio Rupia, who works as a driver at the hospital, the largest in Tete, told the Diário de Moçambique newspaper on Sunday.

“My daughter, who was in the hospital, was informed by her colleagues of the name and surname, looked at the body and recognized her brother. From there she began to make telephone calls, establishing what had happened, despite the false police statements,” Rupia said.

Rupia also said that, when confronted by the anger generated by the killing, the same PRM agents would claim that they shot the young man because he was trying to escape from the cell where he was being held.

“Even so, these statements do not ring true, since the bullet entered his chest and came out of his back, and if he was fleeing, he would have been hit in the back,” Rupia added.

Asked why his son had been detained, Bonifacio Rupia replied: “I do not know for sure, but they said that the cops found him with a motorcycle that did not belong to him. The owner of the motorbike was said to be going to get the papers, but never returned. Then suddenly my son was shot.”

Interviewed by the Diário de Moçambique, the head of the PRM’s public relations department in Tete, Deolinda Matsinhe, said she had set up an inquiry to investigate the case and determine how it came about that the police had ended the life of a young person.

Source: Diário de Moçambique