Operatives of the Rapid Response Squad, RRS, of the Lagos State Police Command attached to the Victoria Island area of Lagos State, have arrested a suspected mad man, one Lanrewaju Jaiyeola, with two mobile phones, 22 Automated Teller Machine, ATM cards, several bank tellers of recent bank transactions and a power bank.
The 39-year-old suspect, who according to the police had been on their watch-list for about two weeks, was arrested by the RRS operatives with a knapsack on Ozumba Mbadiwe Road.
The police said they were not convinced that Jaiyeola was actually mad, because initially, he was well-spoken, later on, he started talking unreasonably. They however, took him to their base in Alausa, Ikeja.
The police discovered that eight of the credit cards which had different names and banks, were still valid.
One of the officials who didn’t want his name mentioned, told The Punch that when they noticed him, he appeared like a mentally unstable person.
“When we invited him for interrogation, he responded normal to all our enquiries and a few minutes into the interrogation, he started straying from the normal course of our enquiries and was not making sense at all,” he disclosed.
The official added that his behaviour raised further suspicion and they decided to search the knapsack he was arrested with.
He said, “Inside the backpack, we found several bank tellers of recent bank transactions, 22 ATM cards, a power bank, lots of invoices hidden in pieces of papers, one Nokia phone and a BlackBerry.”
A policeman at their base in Alausa, Ikeja, said, “The suspect made statements suggestive of somebody disguising as a mad man to perpetrate crime.
According to the unidentified police officer, “Initially, we noticed that he was mentally balanced because he was answering the questions posed to him adequately. But all of a sudden, he started sounding incoherent and illogical again.
“While interrogating him, he threatened the Investigating Police Officer, IPO, saying, ‘I will make life unbearable for you if you don’t let me go. So it was at this point we realised that possibly he might be enjoying the patronage of some highly-placed people whom we believe he was working for.”
Confirming the arrest, the RRS Commander, Olatunji Disu, said, “Jaiyeola has been transferred to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS, Ikeja for detention and further investigation.”
