The Consultant Pathologist to the Lagos Sate Government, John Obafunwa who was assigned to carry out autopsy on 99 bodies after the #EndSARS #Lekkitollgate shooting has released his report.
According to him, three of the bodies were from #Lekkitollgate.
The shooting followed a nationwide protest tagged #EndSARS by Nigerian youths against police brutality.
The youths held peaceful and well-organised street protests and sit-outs at strategic locations across major cities. The epicentre in Lagos was the Lekki Toll Gate.
The protest was in its 12th day when soldiers arrived and fired live bullets at the youths who only waived the Nigerian flag and chanted the national anthem.
The operation of the soldiers brought the protests to an abrupt halt. Controversies have however, trailed the actual number of fatalities since the abrupt halt to the protests.
Giving his report at the hearing of the judicial panel assigned to investigate the military invasion of the Lekki Toll Gate protest ground, Pathologist, Obafunwa said that 99 bodies were received for autopsy between the 20th and the 24th of October, 2020.
He added that of the 99 bodies, only 3 were from Lekki Toll Gate while the rest were received from other parts of the state including Fagba, Ikorodu, Surulere, Ajah among others.
According to him, “They instructed us to conduct autopsy on the bodies that came in between the 20th to the 21st and up to about the 24th and we did the autopsy on the bodies, not just Lekki but cases from Ajah, Surulere, Ikorodu, Fagba, Ikoyi Prisons and all those things amounting to a total of 99. But I’m only here with the 3 from Lekki.”
Obafunwa added that the first person was brought in from Lekki bridge and was discovered to have suffered laceration on the side of his skull, but died as a result of “bleeding in his chest cavity and blunt force trauma to his chest.”
He said that the second male was declared dead in the early hours of October 21, after suffering an open skull fracture, but disclosed that there was no sign of gunshot injury.
That body showed signs of having suffered hypertension as well as rib fracture but noted that the cause of death was “skull and brain injury which was due to blunt force trauma.”
The report on the third body revealed death due to severe blood loss as a result of complications suffered from gunshot injury.
The pathologist was thereafter asked to return on the 19th of June with reports on the rest of the 96 bodies.
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Mass protests against police brutality in Nigeria.