Anthony Iwuoma
Contrary to police claims the post-mortem report of Jumoke Oyeleke, the woman who was shot dead during a Yoruba Nation rally in Lagos on July 3, has confirmed that the 25-year-old woman died at 11:30 a.m., during the protest.
The autopsy, which was carried out at the Department of Pathology and Forensic of the Lagos State Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) by Dr. S.S Soyemi, identified cause of her death as “hemopericardium, disruption to the heart and lungs and missile injury to the chest.”
The police had attempted to disperse the peaceful rally at the Gani Fawehnimi Freedom Park in Ojota by firing guns and tear gas canisters into the air.
Though it was reported that the deceased was hit in the back as she fled from the scene of the police shootings with other people, the police had issued a statement denying that their operatives fired live bullets at the rally.
In a statement, the police further claimed that the deceased’s corpse “was found wrapped and abandoned at a distance, far from Ojota venue of the rally, behind MRS Filling Station, inward Maryland, on the other side of the venue, with dried blood stains suggesting that the corpse is not fresh. After a close look at the corpse, a wound suspectedly sustained from a sharp object was seen on it.”
However, Jumoke’s family has confirmed the autopsy report
According to, Afolabi Wasiu, an uncle to the late Jumoke, who spoke to Premium Times:
“What they said was that they couldn’t find the bullet in her body. That the bullet went out, that is what the autopsy is saying.”
He said the police were also yet to give the family closure concerning their investigation of the incident.
He added that when they went to request for her body on the same day of the incident, the police commander at Ojota asked them to “calm down for them to be able to detect the kind of bullet that penetrated through her, that they were not the only security agencies in that vicinity at the time, that they cannot detect that this was what happened.
“They said when they start the investigation, they will check the bullet and the number.”
Wasiu said with the absence of the bullet, he doubts if the culprit would be found.
“We know how this government works, they have played the game already and have been telling lies, different lies, look at the mother, her brain is not stable,” he said.
