MONROVIA – Climaxing of campaign activities turned bloody on Saturday in District 15, Montserrado County after supporters of the opposition coalition candidate, Telia Urey and the ruling CDC candidate’s supporters clashed in a stone-throwing riot.
Report by Lennart Dodoo, [email protected]
The commotion, according to reports, was provoked when supporters of the ruling party’s candidates carrying caskets with the picture of Telia Urey started booing at her supporters who were already in the District closing up their campaign activities.
An eyewitness informed FrontPageAfrica that matters began to get out of hand when a supporter of the ruling party, tore down Telia Urey’s campaign banner, stood on it and began using profane words on her. This caused one of her supporters who felt agitated, to walk up to the CDC supporter and violently pushed him to the ground. He reportedly sustained some minor injury.
This led to the throwing of stones between the two groups creating a scene.
Several persons from both sides sustained injuries as a result of the stone-throwing.
Moments after the riot, Telia took to Facebook accusing the police of preventing her supporters from having access to their party headquarters in the district. She wrote:
“After our supporters were violently attacked by CDC supporters some minutes ago, Police have set up a block in front of our Headquarters to prevent our people from going inside of Logan Town! Abu’s people are being allowed to parade the streets. This is totally unfair and unjust!
We will continue to be law-abiding and peaceful! We will be sure to celebrate today as we close our campaign!!”
Speaking to FrontPageAfrica, Police Spokesman Moses Carter confirmed that 14 persons sustained injuries but were all treated and discharged on Saturday.
According to him, the police did not make any arrest during the riot “because the situation was volatile”. He told FPA that the police only managed to “arrest the situation and ensure that calm returned to the area”.
Carter confirmed that the police set up a roadblock on Logan Town Broad Street before the police depot in the area, not far from Telia’s party headquarters.
“What we did was to set up a buffer zone to prevent the two groups from coming into contact with each other. It was not our intention to stop her supporters from going to the party headquarters but we had to set up a roadblock so that they would not clash with each other again,” he told FPA Sunday morning.