Defence lawyers representing the six people accused of murdering Joan Faith Apio, a Primary One pupil at Jozan Nursery and Primary School, have failed to obtain CCTV footage they hoped would support their case.
The lawyers had been given three days from Friday, August 7, 2026, to obtain footage from Soroti Regional Referral Hospital and Pride Bank after the High Court in Soroti ordered the institutions to produce the recordings.
Justice Boniface Wamala issued the order after school directors Suzan Vivian Ariokot and Joseph Okedi told court that the footage could help establish their whereabouts on February 5, 2025, when Apio was killed.
Apio was found dead in the school’s latrine on that day. The High Court has since ruled that the prosecution established a prima facie case, requiring the six accused to present their defence.
The accused are school directors Okedi and Ariokot, headteacher James Edoket, school cook Valentine Opio, school matron Osula Adong and police officer John Bosco Obotol. They have all denied the murder charges.
Ariokot says she was at Pride Bank processing a 50 million Shillings loan when Apio was killed and believes the bank’s CCTV footage could corroborate her account. Okedi, on the other hand, sought footage from Soroti Regional Referral Hospital, arguing that it could challenge testimony from a prosecution witness who said Okedi described Apio’s death as an accident when he arrived at the hospital.
Defence lawyer Francis Ajuun told court on Monday that he and his colleague, Joseph Odong, went to the hospital on Friday to inspect the CCTV recordings in accordance with the court order. He said the hospital assembled IT experts and security personnel to assist them, but their search for footage from February 5, 2025, was unsuccessful.
According to Ajuun, hospital officials said the CCTV system had storage-capacity problems, and that cameras covering the outpatient department were not operational on the day in question.
The defence team then checked footage from the camera at the hospital gate but was again informed that no recording was available because of the storage problem. Their attempt to obtain footage from Pride Bank was also unsuccessful.
Ajuun said bank officials told the lawyers that the court order had to be delivered to the bank’s head office in Kampala for review before the recordings could be released.
“We have failed to avail this court with any CCTV footage,” Ajuun told Justice Wamala, asking for more time to travel to Kampala and serve the bank’s head office with the order.
While the defence was unable to secure the CCTV recordings, the prosecution told court that police had brought phones belonging to Ariokot, which she had said were linked to CCTV cameras at her business premises.
The prosecution asked that the phones be charged so the court could check whether they contained footage from February 5, 2025, which could show Ariokot’s movements on the day Apio was killed.
Justice Wamala ordered a stand-down to allow the phones to be charged within the court premises. The process was carried out in the presence of the accused, their defence lawyers and the prosecution-URN. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com
