MIKE MUGALA, Lusaka
YOU don’t expect a dangerous criminal being pursued by the police Flying Squad to unknowingly start proposing love to a female member of the security wing at a bar.
But such has been Maureen Chileshe Shonga’s experience in some of those darker plots by Zambia’s criminals she was once involved in trailing as a police officer.
The only female member of the Flying Squad among six men in the CID department at the time, Maureen remembers her encounter with one criminal who attempted to propose love to her before she and her colleagues arrested him at a bar.
Maureen is now confined to a wheelchair. Her stay in the Flying Squad was cut short when she broke her legs and spinal cord in a road accident at Munali Hills in 2001.
The police squad was on its way to Mazabuka to investigate a murder case of a businessman of Asian origin when the Toyota Land Cruiser they were travelling in overturned at Munali Hills.
“I dozed off and did not know what happened. I just saw people trying to pull me from a Toyota Land Cruiser. My legs were trapped and my head buried in sand,” she recalls.
Despite what happened to her, Maureen has moved on with her life and CLICK TO READ MORE