Catch Them Young: 16-yr-old boy remanded for armed robbery

A 16-year-old boy who tried to play an adult by robbing a boutique has been remanded by a court in Lagos.

A 16-year-old boy, Bolaji Bello, has been remanded by an Ikeja Magistrates' Court, Lagos, for allegedly robbing a boutique located on Tijani Street, Ilemba Awori, in the Ajangbadi area of the state, reports Punch.

Bello, a Senior Secondary School 1 (SSS1) student, according to the report, with an accomplice who is on the run, had stormed the shop on December 15, 2015, around 10pm, under the pretext of buying clothes and after they had selected some shirts, a pair of trousers and a cap worth N10,500, and had pretended to be making payment to the shop owner, identified as Okeke Ikenna, they brought out a gun and a cutlass, ordering the attendant and his girlfriend who was also at the shop, to lie down.

They then went ahead to dispossess their victims of two Tecno phones valued at N30,000; an LG phone worth N29,000 and one Infinity phone valued at N15,000, as well as a cash sum of N54,000.

It was after they had left the shop that the attendant raised an alarm and some passersby got wind of their operation and gave them a chase, leading to Bello’s arrest and after he had been given a sound beating, he was handed over to the police at the Ilemba Hausa Division from where he was transferred to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, Ikeja, for investigation.

Bello reportedly confessed to the crime, saying it was his first time and he was initiated to it by the fleeing Friday.

He was subsequently arraigned before a presiding magistrate in Ikeja, Mrs. O. Olanipekun, on Thursday, on two counts of robbery.

A police prosecutor, Inspector William Ologun, told the court that the offence contravened Section 294 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2011, and was punishable under Section 295 (2) of the same law.

The accused’s plea was not taken by the court just as his defence counsel told the court that Bello’s age, which is 16, had been falsified on the charge sheet as 19. The observation prompted Olanipekun to go through the statement Bello made to the police after which she discovered that he was actually 16 years old.

The magistrate subsequently ordered that the suspect be remanded in the Children Corrective Home while his case file be forwarded to the Directorate of Public Prosecutions for legal advice and adjourned the case till February 1, 2016.