Zimbabwean Catholic priest in UK mystery death

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Posted to the web: 23/12/2008 02:56:21
A ZIMBABWEAN Catholic priest has been found dead with stab wounds in Sutton, London.

Police have named the man as Fr Augustine Chigodora, 32.

A post mortem examination gave the cause of death as self-inflicted wounds, but Zimbabweans in the local community question this explanation.

“The way this tragic death is being investigated by the police and handled by the media here is very curiously different from how we have known similar cases to be dealt with,” said Zimbabwean, Msekiwa Makwanya, who lived in the same neighbourhood as Chigodora.

“The police would normally appeal through the media for members of the public to help with information and the British newspapers would normally show respect for the dead by not publishing the cause of death before an inquest by the coroner. There are some very worrying inconsistencies in media reports with one suggesting that two men were picked up while another report suggested that he died of self-inflected wounds.”

Police were called to the rear of the Charles Cryer Theatre on Carshalton High Street just after 10.20PM last Wednesday following reports of a male suffering from stab wounds. That man was Father Chigodora, who served at Holy Cross Church in Carshalton.

Paramedics arriving at the scene attempted to treat him but he later died at St George’s Hospital.

Soon after Chigodora’s death, police said they had two men in custody linked to his death.

A local woman who saw the police arrive said a black car was spotted crashed and abandoned in Beddington Park just a few hundred yards from the scene of the death, although it was unclear if there was a connection to Chigodora.

A member of staff at Village Bakers told a local newspaper that in the morning of Chigodora’s death, a customer had told staff she had seen a man wielding a knife around the neighbourhood.

She said: "Apparently he was waving around a knife and damaging cars, stabbing them or something.”

She had no idea if that was Chigodora or not.

She added: “People are not that shocked here; it seems to be just one of those things."

Bishop Robert Ndlovu, the Archbishop of Harare, is said to be already in England to arrange the repatriation of Fr Chigodora’s body and to receive an official report on the circumstances of his death.
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