EYEWITNESS: Police arrived 45 mins after Sheikh Mutumba killing

By Francis Otucu

Shakim Ndaga, a retail trader whose shop is about 30 meters away from Sheikh Mutumba’s home, has in an interview with URN said that he saw the suspected assailant fleeing the scene but couldn’t recognize him.

He added, even after they alerted police, the officers arrived 45 minutes late and as such, they gave the assailants enough time to escape.

“I saw the suspected assailant fleeing the scene but I didn’t trail him. We alerted police officers who arrived 45 minutes later. The delay by the police to arrive at the scene gave the assailant plenty of time to escape,” he said.

In response, the police say the patrol car had suffered a flat tyre.

Jeff Ssebuyungo, the Bugiri District Police Commander said that residents intimated to him that the assailant fled to Kapyanga Sub County where his alleged accomplices sped off in a Toyota Ipsum.

However, efforts to trail them were frustrated after the police patrol vehicle suffered a flat tyre.

Family members and eyewitnesses say that the assailant who gunned down Sheikh Masuudi Mutumba, an imam in Bugiri District in eastern Uganda, trailed him from the trading centre to his home.

Sheikh Mutumba was gunned down at his home in Busimba village, Iwemba Sub County, on Friday night.

He was shot twice through the left ear and one bullet was retrieved from his head during a post-mortem carried out at Bugiri General Hospital.

The deceased’s 10-year-old child whose names have been withheld said that he accompanied his father to purchase sugar from Iwemba trading centre, and saw a man trailing them but mistook him for a guest.

“I saw a man behind us but I didn’t mind him, and immediately when we reached home, my father received a call and when he went out for better network, the man who was clad in a black hood shot him twice in the head and fled the scene,” the child told this reporter.

Mutumba, 60, has been serving as the Iwemba deputy county Khadi and is survived by one wife, Safina Nabirye and ten children.

Four people have so far been arrested in connection to the murder and are being held at Bugiri police station as the hunt for more suspects continues.