While most people around the country were enjoying their holidays on boxing day, Saturday, 26th of December, 2015, twin brothers and their friend were shot dead by a trigger happy policeman who also killed himself.
It was also revealed the twin boys were the only children of their mother and they lost their father back in 2014.
Seventy-five-year-old Beatrice Oyesolu, the mother of the twin brothers shot dead by the policeman guarding Paulson Hotel on Anibaba Street, Ketu-Ikosi, Lagos, told Punch the promises her children made to her had been shattered.
The septuagenarian said the children ─ Taiye, a naval officer and Kehinde, an engineer ─ had concluded plans to start building her a house next month before the tragedy struck.
The twin brothers, aged 34, who hailed from Oro, Kwara State, were bachelors.
The drunken policeman, Stephen James, with Force number 217884, had opened fire on the brothers and their friend, Jeje, who was celebrating his birthday on the fateful day.
The trio had cautioned him to stop harassing customers, who reportedly declined to buy him bottles of beer.
James, said to be a drug addict and notorious for shooting sporadically, killed the twins and their friend before he shot himself dead.
It took entreaties from residents around the hotel to stop the angry mob who wanted to set the facility on fire. Sympathisers thronged a house in the community, where the twins’ mother, who lived in Mile 12, was brought to. The sympathisers rallied round her as she cried uncontrollably.
She said:
“I just came back from church yesterday when they broke the news of their death to me. The government should help me because Taiye and Kehinde were the only hope I have. I have been stripped naked because they are my clothes. Who will I turn to now?
“They promised me a lot of things next year. They wanted to start building a house on my parcel of land next month. This is the seventh month after the death of their father.”
