The case of a man currently being held by the Adamawa State Police Command for killing his friend’s son has remained mysterious.
Neither Police investigators who arrested him when the incident took place last weekend nor journalists who interviewed him on Saturday have been able to obtain enough information from him on why he took the life of his friend’s son.
John Pwadon had in the morning of Friday, February 21, while sitting in the parlour of his friend, Stephen Tarfa, turned suddenly on one of the friend’s children, five-year-old David Stephen, and stabbed him.
Young David died from the knife cuts, and Stephen Tarfa who described Pwadon as his friend who visited him after five years of living far apart, recounted to newsmen how the visit of his friend spelt the end for his child.
Stephen had said, “He has been my friend for the past ten years but we’ve not seen for the past five years until he came visiting last Friday and we accommodated him just the way you would do to a respected old friend.
“In the morning he was with my kids watching cartoons in the parlour, because it was their midterm break, so they didn’t go to school. My wife was in the kitchen preparing breakfast and I was in the bedroom when my daughter cried for help for us to rescue her brother.”
He had said he and his wife both ran to the parlour and found John stabbing little David repeatedly in his neck.
Observers had wondered how Pwadon would turn against a son of his host and snuff the life from him without apparent provocation, but even Pwadon himself, when asked that question Saturday at the police headquarters where he was still being held, he gave no definite answer.
He said, “I had been hearing voices. There was a manipulation around me, a conspiracy I cannot explain. I have been examining things, but I can’t make anything out of it yet.”
Pwadon cut the image of a troubled mind after more than a week in police cell, but there is a suggestion that his mental state is deeply affected.
He denied insinuation that he belongs to a cult group, but said he was in Lagos to do a pastoral studies and had to suspend it after a while because he had no money to sustain himself.
His friend, Stephen, had said last week that Pwadon had come to him complaining bitterly about life and about being so broke and without hope.
Stephen said the one fear he had, which made him hesitate in allowing him to stay in his house was not for the safety of his family but that he (Pwadon) might kill himself out of feeling of frustration.
I didn’t want him to stay because I feared he might commit suicide right in my house, because he looked so dejected,” Stephen said, explaining that he allowed him to stay only because they had been friends and he did not wish to seem to have abandoned him.
The policemen at the Police Command headquarters in Yola who brought Pwadon out for the press interview, said he was hostile to cellmates and was always fighting them.
According to the Adamawa State Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Suleiman Nguroje,
preliminary investigations reveal that he (Pwadon) belongs to a secret cult.
“We are trying now to identify his fellow cult members who may give us the right clue to what he is into. Meanwhile, we are definite that he did what killed his friend’s son because doctors have confirmed that the child died of the knife stabs inflicted on him.”
The police image maker said the command had done a psychiatric test on him to determine his mental health and the result was being awaited.
