By Hassan Gbassay Koroma
Samuel Mattia was brutally murdered
Mamie Mattia, mother of Samuel Brima Mattia, a journalist who was brutally murdered in Waterloo, has called on the police to properly investigate her son’s death and bring to justice those behind his death.
Speaking at her kissy Town residence in Waterloo, the bereaved mother told to Concord Times that the late man was her only male child.
Samuel Brima Mattia, father of two, was a broadcast journalist working for Vopad Radio in Waterloo. He met his sudden death last Wednesday night.
“In the evening hours of Wednesday, Brima was home playing with his two-year-old daughter. He later left, saying he was going to park his official motorbike in the office. He never returned home again,” the mother narrated in tears.
She said claimed that one Joseph Lamin (currently in police custody), commonly called “Dust,” the station manager of Vopad Radio, because the two were always having a fight.
“I had advised my son to stop working at that radio station because he was always having issues with his boss, Joseph Lamin, but he didn’t listen,” she said.
She said the last time she visited her son in the station, Lamin complained bitterly about how her son was insulting him, adding that she pleaded with Lamin to forgive his son and take him as his brother.
“When my son didn’t come home on Wednesday night, we tried calling him, but his phone was switched off. I knew something was not right. In the morning, we tried calling him again and his phone was still off. On my way to his workplace in search of him, I heard a commercial motorbike rider saying someone believed to be a thief had been killed and dumped at the back of the Waterloo prison. Immediately I knew it was my son,” she said.
Kadiatu Kargbo, the pregnant wife of the deceased, said after her husband had gone to drop the bike in the office, at around 8pm she tried to call his phone to know why he has not returned home.
“When I called his phone, it rang twice and went off. But thinking jealousy, I thought he was with another woman. Till morning my husband didn’t return home and his phone was still turned off,” she narrated.
According to her, together with her sister-in-law, they went to the radio station in search of her husband. She said on their arrival, they met the station manager sitting outside and that he also denied knowing the whereabouts of the deceased.
She said together with the manager, they went to the station and reported a case of a missing person.
At around 2pm, we got a telephone call that a dead person had been discovered, and that it was identified to be her husband.
