GULU- A soldier who allegedly shot three people dead in Gulu Town, and injured another, has been taken into custody as relatives asked UPDF to foot burial expenses and compensate the victims.

Both the army and police identified the suspect as L/Cpl Geoffrey Odaga of the UPDF 4th Division headquartered in Gulu.

He allegedly stormed a bar in Kabedo Opong Village in Bardege Division at around 11pm on Saturday night, grabbed cash and began shooting at revellers indiscriminately.

Among the dead is the bar owner, Sunday Ouma, 36; Richard Ochen, the organising secretary for the Democratic Party in Gulu; and, a one Fred Yasiin, 25.

Jimmy Ojok, 23, took a bullet wound on his thigh and is recuperating at Gulu Regional Referral Hospital.

Mr Michael Nyeko, a relative of Ouma, one of the victims, said: “The person who killed our son is a UPDF soldier; our son died a death he wasn’t prepared for”.

“We demand that (the suspect’s) employers (UPDF) make the necessary arrangements for the burials and also compensate for his life,” he said.
Businessman Ouma, he said, had 10 children, who the army must keep in school.

“We want the UPDF to assure us that the children of the decease will study as they have been while their father was alive before their errant soldier took away his life,” added Mr Nyeko.

The Bardege Division chairperson, Mr Patrick Lumumba, blamed the army leadership for allowing soldiers to loiter with guns at night outside their duty stations.

According to Maj Telespehor Turyamumanya, the UPDF 4th Division spokesman, the shooting was a regrettable incident now being handled by the army’s top command.

In Kampala, Army and Defence spokesman, Brig Richard Karemire, in a social media post, noted that “the UPDF 4th Division commander, Brig Emmanuel Kanyesigye, caused the immediate arrest of L/Cpl Geofrey Odaga, the soldier who (on Saturday) night misused his weapon in an unlawful shooting”. “This incident, which led to the death of three revellers in a bar is regrettable…our condolences and sympathies go to the families of the victims as we condemn the action of the soldier,” he wrote.

Sharon Amony, 22, a witness, said she met the soldier as she exited the bar.

“He held me at gun point and fired two bullets on the ground to scare me before shooting dead a man who was approaching from behind,” she said.
The soldier then stormed the bar, grabbed cash and alcohol before firing more bullets as he retreated.

Gulu CID officer, Mr Ronald Were, said the soldier fell asleep nearby and was arrested shortly after the incident.

“The soldier had intentions of robbing the bar, which he successfully did, but he slept off near the scene,” he said.
Detectives recovered the AK-47 rifle and five cartridges, according to one investigator.

Shooting dead of civilians by soldiers, particularly in bars and clubs, is not new.

PAST CASES

March 2015. L/Cpl Kennedy Okumu of Bibia army detach in Amuru District shot dead a barmaid for failing to pay Shs1,000 balance. He was later court-martialled and sentenced to 43 years in prison in April 2015.
November 2011. Lt Col John Kaye shot 26-year-old Steven Kabuye for taking his wife to a bar.
On December 10, 2012. L/Cpl Herbert Rwakihembo, who had returned from a deployment in Somalia, shot dead his fiancée Irene Namuyaba and two others in Luzira, a Kampala suburb.
In 2009, Pte Julius Mucunguzi, then a presidential guard, shot eight dead at Top Bar in the city centre in a fracas over a prostitute he said had nicked his mobile phone.
On May 17, 2010. Pte Alex Kityo, attached to Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, shot a police trainee at Kibuli Police Training dead in a case of mistaken identity as he attempted to kill his estranged girlfriend Irene Chemusto.