POLICE have arrested four (4) suspects over the killing of a University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) student last Thursday evening.
The killing sparked a confrontation between the student’s peers and National Housing Corporation (NHC) flat dwellers in Waigani on Friday morning.
According to the NHC tenants, the student was on his way to school and had taken a short cut near the Waigani Catholic Church between 7pm and 8pm on Thursday.
According to an eye witness, he went into the gate which has a playing field inside and the four suspects approached him asking for a lighter.
He handed the lighter to them and they allegedly asked for his handphone.
It is alleged that he struggled with the four youths, aged between 18 and 25, and one them whipped out a knife and stabbed him.
The student was found near the university homes by Uniforce security guards who rushed him to the hospital but he was pronounced dead on arrival.
When news of his death reached his UPNG classmates and friends, they congregated and confronted the tenants demanding that the suspects be handed over before 2pm on Friday.
The move prompted the tenants to find three of the suspects living in the Waigani area and a fourth in Morata.
All four were handed over to the police.
However, it is alleged that the students were still angry and they went on a rampage, destroying gardens, a mini market and lobbed petrol bombs to gut two NHC units.
UPNG registrar Peter Petsul, in the aftermath of the stabbing, released a security alert urging students to “refrain from further incitement of what is already tense”.
The alert further stated: “I am instructing the Uniforce to temporarily close the gate to the Waigani Catholic Church until the situation allows it to be reopened.”
The National visited the NHC flats and found the destruction.