Security personnel set homes ablaze

 GUARDS from a Lae security company set fire to two homes in a settlement they believed belonged to persons involved in the killing of their operations manager.

Police said guards from the Menyamya-Morobe Security Services (MMSS) went to the Bumayong settlement in Lae between 5pm and 6pm last Friday and torched the two homes. 

Police had warned them last week not to take the law into their hands but wait for investigations into the killing of their manager to be completed.

Lae metropolitan commander Supt Iven Lakatani said the incident happened after police stationed in the area left to take suspects from two separate robberies to town.

“It was during that time that the arson happened,” he said. 

“They just targeted the homes of the suspects in the killing and not everyone.”

Lakatani said no one was injured as all the occupants of the homes had fled after the killing.

Steven Simeon, 29, from Katenga village, Menyamya, Morobe, the operations manager of MMSS, was shot twice on the head while he was driving along the Bumayong front road near Tapiok Market. 

Lae police operations commander Insp Fred Kaiwa said police were treating the burning of the homes as arson and were investigating it separately.

Kaiwa had told the MMSS security guards last Wednesday after the killing not to take the law into their hands.