Updated: The business community of fish vendors and other local petty-traders is protesting the death of a fellow businesswoman in the popular Gambian fishing village of Tanji. Fresh pictures from our reporters on the ground show tires in billowing smoke amid an on-going mass demonstration.  

Protesters lament the increasing murder and other crime rates in the country. Our sources say they complain the lack of effective police and government effort in combating crime, especially, this latest one against a woman. 

But the biggest reason for the protest, according to the youths speaking to our reporters on the scene is the fact that the murdered woman’s family had earlier gone to the police to report her missing. Police reportedly told them they didn’t have a vehicle to mount an investigation.

 “It was the family of the murdered woman that undertook their own investigation and got to the bottom of the demise of their hardworking woman. Police now wants to claim a heroic role in discovering Alima’s disappearance and killing,” sources informed forGambia Tuesday.

Local reports continued that Tuesday’s protesters argued that if President Adama Barrow could display such lavish spending in purchasing fleets of vehicles and motorbikes for NPP and Barrow Youth Movement at the expense of Gambian tax payers, why not equip the country’s police with even one vehicle for more serious functions as investigating such disappearances as that of Alimatou?

Alimatou, a business woman in Tanji was found dead. Her body almost rotten after days of disappearance. Locals told forGambia that she was a businesswoman that saved up to D100,000 in petty-trading. She usually saved her money with a Guinean shopkeeper (name to follow soon). The Guinean shopkeeper owned a shop near the sea in Tanji.

Sainey Manneh was the late Alimatou’s landlord in Tanji. Her husband passed away and she saved all her earnings at the shopkeeper’s. She reportedly asked for the money and the shopkeeper asked her to come for it this last Sunday.

Witnesses say Alimatou then followed the shopkeeper to an unknown location in the bushes. She was last seen alive this past Sunday. She later disappeared for days without trace. 

Alimatou’s disappearance was, however, connected to her agreement to go with  the shopkeeper or the keeper of her earnings. Her decomposing body was later found in the bushes near paradise estate. She was allegedly raped and killed. The suspect, her money keeper earlier denied involvement.

Police had to put him through electric shocks during interrogation, locals said. He later confessed that he killed Alimatou. Alimatou used to support her mum in Senegal while doing business in The Gambia. Sainey Manneh went to the Guinean man and found him packing to flee and that’s how he suspected him.

Meanwhile, the Tanji seaside is out of bounds to traders and local businesses as we publish this. Vendors and petty-traders were asked to return home after showing up to work today as police continue investigations. 

Other locals told forGambia that fights erupted in Tanji and people were sent home from the beach area that hosts numerous local trades and enterprises. They have now morphed into a ful-fledged demonstration.This is a developing story!

Unrelated, five youths were killed by a strayed taxi in a Foni village called Jagil after Sutu-sinjang in Foni Berefet on Sunday, December 27th 2020. The youths were coming from the village of Besseh where they went to attend a carnival. 

The taxi driver was reported to have lost control of his car and slammed into the youths, killing five and wounding 19. The dead included three girls and two boys. They came from the villages of Bullock, Pajana, Jagil, Sutu-sinjang, and Besseh.