Taxi driver’s private parts, tongue, eyes… were missing in another ritual killing

APPALLING exposure on savagely killed taxi driver, Vincent Chandhla have surfaced confirming that his rib-cage was ripped open and vital organs are missing from his body including his eyes and tongue.

The murder pattern is similar to past murders, where eyes, tongue, private parts and vital internal organs have been taken by the assailants. It is suspected such killings are connected to ritual purposes.

His wife, Yvonne Changwe and Sister Maureen, who saw the body at the crime-scene, narrated their dreadful torment from the time Vincent went missing on March 20, this year to the time his decomposed body was discovered.

“The one month period, was full of fear, panic, pain and desperation,” Yvonne said until the time the painful reality struck that indeed her longtime partner was now another victim of the grisly murders targeted on unsuspecting taxi drivers.

 “He left home on March 20th, for work, his car was at the garage and he was using his friend’s car. That was the last time I saw him. Only to hear the shocking news that he was found beheaded in Kabangwe area.

His chest was cut and parts are missing from his body. Who can do such a thing to another human, please?” she said.

In Lusaka’s Garden Township, Yvonne spoke at her sister’s place, where she is now staying with Vincent’s two children, a boy aged five and a girl aged two. Before the discovery of Vincent’s decomposed body, Yvonne in a distorted narration filled with angst, said she searched for her husband during the period when he went and contacted his friends but all efforts were fruitless.

“I panicked and I had to contact the friend he borrowed the car from but he told me that if am looking for Vincent, I should not ask him but go look for him myself and I should not ask him. I felt I was alone in this and I continued to look for him but during all that
period, my efforts were yielding nothing positive and I feared for my husband’s life,” she added.

She said on April 13, this year, she was contacted by a named person, requesting her to meet with him at an unknown venue and that she should go with a photograph of her husband.

In desperation, Yvonne agreed to the proposal which was scheduled for 19:00 hours, when she was to be called again but the caller did not contact her again and when she tried calling the number, she learnt it was out of reach.

“After that I called back my husband’s friend who gave the man I was supposed to meet, to find out but he just told me that I shouldn’t call him because he was sleeping and he also switched off his phone. I tried my husband’s number but it was still not reachable, it has been a painful period,” she said.

She then decided to check at the Lusaka Central Police for her missing husband but he was not there.

She later went to central police to look for her husband but she did not find him.

After a few days, she was informed by that the car her husband was driving had been found in Garden Township, “the backseat had blood stains”, she said as her eyes filled with tears.

Police then took the car to Emmasdale Police station and informed her that she would be contacted in the course of investigating the murder.

On Monday, the day her husband’s body was discovered, she rushed to the crime scene in the company of her sister, Maureen, where they saw the decomposed and beheaded body of Vincent who was murdered at the age of 34.

“I saw the body and I remember the state of my brother-in-law’s body, his chest was cut up to the neckline and his eyes, and tongue and private parts were not there,” Maureen said.

Vincent’s father, Kenneth made a passionate appeal to the Police to find the killers of his son.

Home Affairs Minister, Edgar Lungu has directed the Police to probe the matter and put a stop to the killings that had left five taxi drivers killed in a suspected ritual manner in the country.

A week before Vincent’s murder, another 34-year old taxi driver, Pascal Maboshe, was murdered by three passengers that hired him from Lusaka’s Mtendere Township to Ngwerere.

In December last year, Gift Tembo, 28, another taxi driver of Kabwe was murdered and his body dumped on the Kabwe-Lusaka highway.

Matthews Chipili, 20, was found with his facial skin peeled off and his left eye plugged out while Joseph Simfukwe, 28, who was operating from Downtown Shopping Mall in
Lusaka, was beheaded in January this year in a suspected ritual killing. Mr Simfukwe’s body was discovered in Namwala in Southern province.

That was after the suspected killers booked his taxi from Downtown Shopping Mall in Lusaka to Namwala in Southern Province.

“The murders will escalate in similar fashions and Police need to stop them or else we don’t know who the next victim is among us,” said a taxi-driver who preferred  anonymity.