DNA analysis pins three suspects in Bukwo CAO murder

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Police Directorate of Forensic Science has finally zeroed in on three suspects in the attack and eventual killing of Charles Ogwang, the acting Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) of Bukwo district.

Ogwang was killed on July 8, as he drove a government vehicle registration number UG-0865Z, in Kiryowa village, along the Kampala-Bombo road and in the aftermath, police and sister security agencies received different accounts from eyewitnesses about the attack.

While some of them said he was attacked by a group of five, others said that the attackers were three, all armed with AK47 rifles. But in both accounts, police said that there were two active participants in the shooting that ended Ogwang’s life while one other person filmed the incident.

In his dying declaration at Bombo Military Hospital, Ogwang said he was stopped by a group of civilians that demanded to know whether he was the person they badly needed. In the aftermath, seven suspects were arrested but they were later released after the first DNA sample connected one of the guns, to killings that had happened three years ago in Wakiso district.

Sources at the Police Forensic Directorate have said that DNA analysis of the exhibits picked from the scene has linked the incident to three suspects who have previously participated in similar crimes. The sources said that the yet-to-be-arrested suspects match the DNA of exhibits that were collected during the mobile money and supermarket armed robberies in Nansana municipality, 2019.

“The DNA analysts have successfully marched exhibits collected at the Ogwang murder scene with exhibits that were collected in robbery and murders in Nansana municipality over three years ago. I can confirm that we now know who killed the CAO but we are yet to arrest them,” a source said.

Police spokesperson Fred Enanga confirmed that indeed DNA has identified suspects but they are still on the run. “We now know the suspects but we haven’t arrested them. We know we will get them any time since we have their identities. But we cannot share their identities now,” Enanga said.

Armed with DNA proof, the forensic directorate has reportedly shared the images of the suspects with the Criminal Investigations Directorate-CID, Crime Intelligence-CI, and Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence-CMI. Some of the 26 bullet casings that were collected from the scene were also linked to those picked from Nansana robbery scenes.

One of Ogwang’s killer guns is forensically linked to the murder of four people including Frank Anania, Amim Bugembe, Jimmy Atukuru, and Frank Abaho who were killed mostly in May 2019.

*****

URN