Family cries out as three-year-old boy goes missing in Anambra church

Family members of a three-year-old boy, Chimdindu Oledibe, are in distress over his disappearance during a service at the St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Umunze, Anambra State.

PUNCH Metro learnt that Chimdindu and his cousin, Mmesoma, attended the first Mass with the missing boy’s mother on Sunday, June 28, 2020, but suddenly they both disappeared.

Their aunt, Ufoma, who stated that Mmesoma was later found in another part of the state, said efforts to find Chimdindu had so far proved abortive.

She added that the police did not have any clue about the disappearance of the kindergarten pupil.

Ufoma said, “My mother took Gerald (Chimdindu) and Mmesoma to church on Sunday and settled them on a seat and went out for the choir rehearsal before the Mass began, but when she returned, she could not find them on the seat; only their bottle of water was there.

“She came home to check if they had returned, but when we told her that they had yet to come home, an alarm was raised and we started looking for them. After Mass, the parish priest came to our house and we went to lodge a report at the Umunze Police Station, but we were told to come back after 24 hours if we didn’t see them.

“Around 2pm that Sunday, we got a call from our parish priest that Mmesoma had been found around Ekwulobia by people coming back from church, and when she was asked where she was going to, she could only mention the name of our church, but she was taken to another St. Joseph Church in the area.

“She was able to tell them that it was not her church and the parish priest there called our priest to inform him of the development and when we got there, we confirmed that she was the one.

“After we found Mmesoma, we took her to the police station and she was able to tell us that a woman beckoned on her and Chimdindu to come outside the church and collect biscuits and that the woman took them and mounted a motorcycle.”

Ufoma told PUNCH Metro that the family had been distressed as a result of the incident and urged anyone with information on Chimdindu’s whereabouts to contact the police. Punch