Meme Division: Ruthless youths brutally kill 23-year-old orphan before realising he didn’t steal

By Tata Mbunwe

A group of youths in Bole Bakundu in Meme Division, seized 23-year-old Yanick Moiti on Saturday, April 1, beat and hanged him to death before realising he did not steal.

The youths, about seven in number, accused him of stealing a telephone, a crime he confessed to them he did not commit. But he wasn’t spared.

In the morning of Sunday, April 2, after he had been killed, they realised Moiti was not the purported phone thief.

Yanick Moiti, MMI was reliably informed, had been an orphan since the age of nine, when his mother died.

He had been struggling to make ends meet through farming, in an environment highly hit by the ongoing armed conflict in the English-speaking Regions.

Ndifor Owamba, a native of Bole Bakundu, had been working closely with the deceased before he died.

Although Awamba is based in Yaounde, where he schools at the University of Yaounde I, he was devastated when he learned Moiti was wrongly accused and killed.

“Yanick was the one helping me to send me raw food,” he cried.

“He was beaten out of hatred, because the next day, which was Sunday, it was discovered that he was not the one who stole the phone.”

Owamba told MMI he will not fail to seek justice for Yanick Moiti. He is planning to report Moiti’s killers to the police.

“Actually, I am in Soa, but I have written my complaint already. But I think I can only drop in Kumba, which is beside Bole,” Ndifor Awamba told MMI.

Yanick Moiti is the latest victim of a wave of mob justice that has long seized Cameroonian villages and cities.

His killers buried him

Moiti was tortured for several, before he was hung unto a tree where he was tortured by several other youths.

“That’s when he finally gave up the ghost. He died while maintaining his innocence,” Owamba told MMI in tears.

He was buried the same night. “He finally died, we lost him,” the youths and some mothers can be heard saying in a shocking video shared to MMI.

Owamba says he must seek justice, though finance seems to be the major challenge.

“I am still trying to put some funds together, I will travel to Kumba and report this matter to the police. Moiti was living with my mum, and she is devastated by this.”

Mimi Mefo Info