"They Came in the Night": 13-Year-Old David Raymond, Sole Survivor of the Kawel Massacre, Dies After 18-Day Fight for Life
Kawel Village, Mushere District, Bokkos LGA, Plateau State, David Raymond, the only member of his household to survive the June 22 attack that killed his parents and 20 others, succumbed to his injuries on Friday, July 10, 2026, at approximately 6:00pm GMT.
For 18 days, 13-year-old David Raymond fought for his life in a hospital bed, carrying an AK-47 wound that had torn through his back and stomach and left his intestines exposed.
On Friday evening, that fight ended. Relatives who had not found the strength to tell him he was now an orphan were spared the conversation David died without ever being told his parents were gone.
His father, Raymond Maichibi, 40, and his mother, Nanlop Raymond, 37, were among 21 to 22 people killed in the early hours of Monday, June 22, 2026, when armed assailants stormed Kawel village while residents slept.
They were buried in a mass grave alongside their neighbours days before their son died trying to survive the same night.
What David Told Us
Before he passed, David gave an account of the attack from his hospital bed. He said he was asleep when the gunmen broke into the family home.
His father tried to shield him and was shot. His mother, hiding in the bedroom, was found and shot as well.
David ran, and the attackers shot him in the back as he fled. He did not see the faces of the men who attacked his family, but he recognised the Fulani dialect they spoke.
The Night Kawel Was Attacked
David's family was among dozens of households caught in what has been described as one of the deadliest single attacks on Plateau State's Mushere communities this year.
Witnesses said the assault began shortly after 11:40pm on June 22, when armed men speaking Fulani first struck a police post and a nearby government clinic before moving through the rest of the village.
Bokkos Youth Leader Christopher Luka confirmed that distress calls reached community leaders shortly after midnight, and that security personnel in Bokkos were alerted immediately, though they did not arrive until hours later.
Casualty figures reported in the attack's immediate aftermath ranged from 18 to 22 dead, with local human rights advocates and community leaders settling on 21 to 22 as the toll became clearer in the days that followed.
Among the dead were a pastor and a retired army officer. Governor Caleb Mutfwang condemned the killings as heinous and ordered security agencies to identify those responsible, while the Plateau State Police Commissioner described the attackers only as hoodlums, a characterisation that has drawn criticism from residents and rights advocates who say it understates the scale and apparent coordination of the assault.
The attack came less than a week after the killing of the District Head of Gwande, Saf Samuel Alaket, and roughly a week after a separate raid on a federal training institute near Jos, part of a pattern of escalating violence across Plateau State's southern LGAs that has left rural communities like Kawel increasingly exposed.
A Child Alone
David Raymond's death closes what should never have been an open case. He was the last living link to a family wiped out in a single night, and for 18 days he represented something the rest of Kawel could hold onto a survivor, a witness, a child who might still make it.
His account, delivered from a hospital bed while surgeons worked to save the family he'd already lost, is now among the only first-hand testimony of what happened inside that house on June 22.
There is no official update yet on the eventual number of children orphaned by the Kawel attack, how many survivors remain hospitalised, or what action, if any, has followed Governor Mutfwang's directive to identify the perpetrators.
Prime Brief Media is seeking comment from the Plateau State Police Command, Operation Safe Haven, and community leaders in Mushere district, and will update this report accordingly.
Rest well, David. Prime Brief Media extends its condolences to the extended Raymond family and the entire Kawel community.
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