14-Year-Old Donald Commit Suicide In Calabar

Residents of Ekondo Street in Calabar are agitating and questioning how a 14-year-old boy named Donald could have taken his own life using a shoelace as a string.

Donald resided with his grandmother at 49, Ekondo Street in Calabar South. On a Saturday afternoon, he was alleged to have committed suicide by tying a shoelace around his neck.

According to one of his friends, Eyo, the boy had completed his morning chores that Saturday and went to buy a cassava meal locally known as fufu.

He said, “After going to buy the fufu, nobody heard from him again until about noon when the grandmother called a carpenter to help him bring the boy down from where he was leaning on the wall with a rope on his neck.

“The carpenter asked about what had happened, but the woman did not provide any clear information, causing the carpenter to panic and raise an alarm.

“Nobody heard any noise from the compound until the carpenter ran out and raised the alarm and we all went inside the compound, the boy’s legs were on the floor, and there was no table or object which the boy climbed to fix his head on the noose and the string round his neck was just a shoelace”.

He said the police from Atakpa Police Station came in to assess the situation and later went back.

“The police did not touch the boy and others who were called to take the boy down did not touch the body and when the woman was asked to take the boy down she refused”

Another resident of the street said he is at a loss how the boy could have committed suicide with a shoelace.

“There is no how the boy could tie that tiny rope on his neck to commit suicide without the shoelace cutting”

He said since the boy died he has been having nightmares and seeing the boy in his dream.

“We were very close and since Saturday afternoon when I saw him leaning on that wall with a rope round his neck, each time I sleep, I see him and he .keeps asking for justice. All these are happening because the boy is an orphan. His dad and mother are both dead.”

Ms Irene Ugbo, the Cross River Police Command Spokesman said she is yet to be briefed on the matter “If the incident took place on Saturday, then I would get the details on Monday during the briefing,” she said.

Kanyi Daily recalls that a Pastor named Prosper Igboke from a Pentecostal Church in Nnewi, Anambra State, had committed suicide by jumping off a two-story building in Nnewi.