A suspected cattle thief is dead after he was lynched by a furious mob of residents in Nakaseke district. The mob is currently in pursuit of six others.
A gang of seven suspected cattle thieves raided two homes at Lwetunga village in Kapeeka Sub-County in Nakaseke district on Saturday night and stole two cows, one from Godfrey Ssempijja and the other from Ephraim Magemesi.
The thieves proceeded to slaughter the three animals, each valued at 3 million shillings and loaded the beef onto their pick-up vehicle Registration Number UAP.202S.
However, the residents after learning about the raid, raised an alarm in the early hours of Sunday morning and the chase of the gang members started.
The matter was also reported to Kapeeka police station prompting officers to tip off their colleagues at Nakaseke police station to spread the dragnets.
But, by the time Nakaseke police officers launched a chase, the vehicle had passed through. The officers then called their colleagues at Kasangombe Police Station who joined the chase and shot one of the hind tyres of the vehicle, but the driver continued to drive away, with difficulty, though at a slowed speed.
At this point, locals who had received information at Bulyake village, in the neighboring Sub-County, Kasangombe, intercepted the vehicle, forcing the suspected thieves to take to their heels into the nearby bushes.
Thieves abandoned the vehicle in the middle of the road at around 7.am to save dear lives and afterwards the residents set in on fire.
The angry residents continued to hunt for the fled suspected thieves, until they landed on one who has only been identified as Khamis believed to be in his mid-20s at Bugungu village in Makulubita Sub-County, in Nakaseke’s neighboring district of Luweero, where they have lynched him from.
Isah Ssemwogerere the Savannah Region police publicist says that preliminary investigations show that the total number of suspected thieves was seven.
The one who has been lynched was the driver of the burnt vehicle and his body has been conveyed to Nakaseke General Hospital for postmortem as investigations continue on this case opened at Nakaseke Central Police Station (CPS) on Vide 108/2021.
