Buea: Boy shot dead while hunting snails

A lad whose name we got as Mua Frank, has reportedly been shot dead in Buea, capital city of Cameroon’s South West Region.

Sources say he was gunned down around the town’s Central market at about 11pm Sunday night as he and friends went hunting snails.

Snail trading is a very common practice in the region, as the critters are eaten as a delicacy or as compliments to many meals.

Many youth like Frank hunt and commercialise the snails popularly known as ‘Nyamangoro’ or simply Nyama.

They do so as a means of livelihood.

Unfortunately for him and his loved ones, Frank failed to return home after last night’s snail hunt as he was shot dead.

While it remains uncertain who his killers are, the area where he was shot dead is often manned by the forces of law and order who have been combatting separatist fighters in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions for five years today.

It was around the same locality that a soldier blew off the brains of a little girl last year, and was later beaten to death by a mob.

Frank’s death makes him the latest of thousands of victims killed in the armed conflict as a solution is yet to be found.