A 17-year-old Secondary school student, Elijah Anthony has been arrested for killing his neighbour’s five-year-old child after collecting N400,000 ransom from the victim’s parents.

Anthony, who is a student of Manret High School in Angul D community, Jos South Local Government Area of Plateau State, was among 39 other suspects paraded for various offences at the police command’s headquarters in Jos on Thursday.

The state police command said they received a call that one Dawon Pam, was missing and that all searches throughout the night proved abortive.

He stated that the following day of the incident, a pair of shoes belonging to the victim was found close to a handwritten note stating that “If he wants his child, he should give Five Million Naira (N5,000,000.00) and that he should not call them but he should send a text message through the phone number below”.

The teenage boy who spoke to journalists claimed he committed the crime due to hardship and suffering.

According to him: “Quite okay, my parents are taking care of me, and when this crime was committed, my mother knew nothing about it. I even used her phone to do the transaction without her consent, demanding five million Naira as ransom.

“On the 13th of this month, a boy was kidnapped; they are my closest neighbours. His elder brother was sent outside to buy something, so the five-year-old boy was behind, following them. I and my friend planned to carry him, and eventually, we succeeded in carrying him.

“We took the boy and hid him somewhere, and later in the evening, the family of the boy came and were looking for him. I pretended and joined them to look for the boy. We searched for the boy but couldn’t find him.

Later we demanded N5 million, but we were able to get N400,000. But five days later, the boy was killed. I was the one that killed him because I fear he might tell his parents that I was the one that kidnapped him if we had released him.

“I was in my house when the police came and arrested me. It is the hardship that drove me into kidnapping and killing. I was supposed to write WAEC this year but I didn’t. Please, forgive me.”

The State Commissioner of Police, Okoro Julius Alawari, arrested Anthony and 39 other suspects said the corpse of the five-year-old child identified as Dawom Pam had been recovered from a swampy place near the uncompleted building where he was dumped by the suspects and handed over to his parents for burial.

He said all 39 suspects would be prosecuted when investigations were concluded.