Notorious kidnapper, Vampire, killed in police shootout

A notorious kidnapper in South East and South South region popularly called ‘Vampire’ has been killed in an alleged shootout with the police.

According to the police spokesman, Jimoh Moshood, a Chief Superintendent of Police, Henry Chibueze, aka Vampire, was killed in Omu Awa forest, at Ikwerre, Rivers State.

Moshood said that the “dreaded and deadly kidnap-for-ransom kingpin” was killed by the Police Special Forces, led by the Inspector General of Police’s (IGP) Intelligence Response Team (IRT) at 1 am today. He said that five suspected members of the gang were also arrested and a cache of arms and ammunition recovered from them.


Moshood revealed that the gang had been responsible for so many kidnappings and robbery attacks in Imo, Abia, Rivers, Delta and other states in the South-East and South-South.

 He noted that the arrested members of the gang would be paraded and charged to court on completion of the investigation.

They were identified as 26-year-old Obinna Elah, Arinze Abecheta, 24; Chukwu Ebuka Ikeazota, 23; Samuel Ugochukwu, 24, and Clifford Aheana.

“Chibueze, the Vampire, was the criminal spirited away by his gang members on 27 January at the premises of an Owerri High Court,” he said.

“He was arrested in 2015 and had been in prison custody following the kidnap of the wife of a government official.“

Chibueze, who was brought to the court alongside other arrested suspects, escaped when gunmen in a sports utility vehicle which had been parked at the premises opened fire immediately he disembarked from the prison van.

“The suspect was then spirited away by the gunmen, leaving five Prisons officials and some bystanders wounded by the gunfire. Two other suspects were taken along with him.”

The Public Relations officer of Nigeria Prisons Service, Mr James Madugba, said that the accomplices had been mistaken for operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS), hence no alarm was raised when they were spotted at the Court.

Chibueze who was paraded by the DSS before the state governor in 2015 admitted to having carried out several kidnappings in the state and beyond before his arrest.After Chibueze’s escape in January, Imo State governor, Rochas Okorocha, announced a N5 million bounty for information that would lead to his arrest.