• Name: Favour Uwene
• Age: 11 Years
• Sex: Female
• Location: Akwa Ibom
• Category: Physical Bravery (Category Winner)

11 YEAR OLD GIRL LED TO THE ARREST OF A MURDERER RIGHT IN THE ACT

Favour Uwene hails from Akwa Ibom State and is the third daughter in a family of six. She is known to be humble, caring and hardworking and these qualities stands her out amongst her mates. This story is about how the young girl’s inquisitive mind led to the apprehension of a ritualist right in his nefarious act.
About a year ago, two girls, in the same age bracket as Favour, came to visit and spend the school holidays with their aunt who lived in the same house with Favour. The latter became so fond of the sisters that she would never miss seeing them in a day. She would check on the girls early in the morning and in the evening, every day. To her parents, Favour’s fondness of the girls was rather an intrusion into the neighbor’s privacy but to the neighbor and the girls, it was highly appreciated. However after much persistence to dissuade Favour from her constant visits to the girls, her parents allowed her.

On this fateful day, the girls were home alone; their mother had left for the market. Soon after, a young man in his mid-twenties and an uncle to the girls, came into the house and securely locked the doors after him with the intention of committing a heinous act against the visiting girls. A while after, Favour turned up at the house for her usual routine visit. When she got there, the front door was locked. This was quite unusual, Favour thought. The house was unusually silent unlike other days she had come visiting.

Disappointed, Favour made to return home but decided to go round the house to check if the back door was locked for security reason and discovered it was equally locked. She then concluded that the girls had certainly gone out with their aunt. So she decided to return home. However, as Favour was leaving the house, she noticed a window pane that was not properly closed. She became very curious and decided to peep through the window, thinking may be the girls were sleeping. So, she picked a stool she found in the yard and climbed to peep through the window. As she peeked, Favour sighted a mutilated body in a big basin, with legs hanging loosely over the basin. She also saw a blood soaked dressed. Immediately, she sensed that a heinous crime was being committed; someone was being killed. Favour ran back to her house to tell her mother what she saw. Unknown to her that the murderer was at that time in the process of slaughtering the second girl.
When Favour informed her mother about the crime, she dismissed the report, as she probably could not imagine such act been committed anywhere close by. However, on Favour’s insistence, the mother decided to follow her to the crime scene. Upon their arrival, Favour’s mother carefully and quietly climbed the same stool her daughter climbed and peeked into the room, through the same window. When she saw the mutilated bodies, she jumped down and ran back to alert her next door neighbor who was home.
The neighbor got to the crime house and flung the window wide open, at the same time, the murderer emerged with the body of the second girl. On seeing, that he has caught red-handed, the butcher dropped the lifeless body of the second girl and made to escape. The neighbor instantly raised an alarm and other neighbors ran to the scene and surrounded the house in order to block the murderer from escaping. On seeing that the house had been surrounded, the murderer locked himself in the house.
Other neighbors and passers-by rushed to the scene, armed with all sorts of weapons, in case the criminal decided to hack people down in order to escape. After a while, some daring men volunteered to break down the entrance door. They gained entrance into house and succeeded in disarming the killer and got him tied up. The mutilated bodies of the victims were a gruesome sight as the man had beheaded the two girls who came visiting. He had also subdued a third victim, the dead girls’ niece who was the daughter of the aunt they came to visit. She was found with a blindfold, her mouth was covered with a masking tape and her hands and legs tied. She was the next person to be slaughtered!
The crime tools found on the scene were a butcher’s knife, machete and small axe.
Unfortunately, Favour’s curiosity could only save the life of the neighbor’s daughter and not that of the two sisters who only came to visit. When the girl’s mother returned from the market to hear what happened, she wept uncontrollably. Although, she confessed that she is yet to fully recover from the shock, she remains grateful to God for using Favour to save the life of her own daughter. The murderer was handed over to the police, arraigned and jailed.