The CCTV footage has been reviewed. It tells a story that is almost unbearable in its simplicity.A woman’s bag is snatched by a thief who immediately jumps onto a waiting boda boda and disappears. Seconds later, Sydney Gongodyo — who had nothing to do with the robbery — crosses the road near Frobel Stage in Bukoto and arrives at the exact spot where it happened. The woman screams. The crowd looks around. They see Sydney. They decide he is the thief.He was not.His father stood before hundreds of mourners at Kings Park Arena on Sunday and delivered the most detailed account yet of what the camera recorded.“Because there were CCTV cameras, you could clearly see what happened, that this young man was in a wrong place at a wrong time,” he said, his voice carrying the weight of a man trying to hold himself together in public while describing how his son was crushed to death by a crowd for a crime he did not commit.The father walked mourners through the footage step by step — not to relitigate what cannot be changed, but because the family felt the record needed to be set straight.“Sydney was crossing, according to the CCTV camera, from the other side of the road coming to this side of the road. The camera is also showing that there is a lady nearby, and some person snatching a bag from that lady and jumping on a boda boda which was there. But Sydney now reaches a point around where these fellows are going away and now this woman is making alarms and then they bounce on this young man.”The real thief was gone before Sydney even arrived at the scene.Sydney Gongodyo’s Father Speaks Out on CCTV Footage Showing His Son’s Final Moments. #NzeKookie Full Video Via YouTube https://t.co/PXaGdzPlhB pic.twitter.com/j0CrUQgzUI— Kookie Promotions (@kookiepro_) June 7, 2026What followed has been documented on video that has circulated widely across Uganda’s social media. Sydney surrounded by an angry crowd. Sydney being punched and kicked. Sydney — a massive, physically capable rugby player who represented Uganda nationally — not fighting back, not running, but pleading.“Given the discipline that you get from sports, because he was a massive guy, he could have sprinted off if he had done something,” his father noted. “But the young man was pleading his innocence, according to the CCTV coverage.”He was struck with a heavy wooden log. He collapsed. The crowd continued kicking him while he lay on the ground.“So these guys bounce on him and literally crush him up. For us, that is the pain that we are going through, that the young man suffered excruciating pain. I think his death was very, very painful, extremely very painful.”The eulogy turned to grief when the father addressed not the crowd but Sydney himself — or the idea of him.“Will Sydney come back? He will not come back.”He described raising a son who was taught to be nice and responsible. A young man whose very innocence — his refusal to run, his choice to stand and plead rather than flee — reflected the values his parents instilled in him. And that same innocence is what kept him in place long enough for the crowd to kill him.“As a family, we think that the way we raised Sydney, we raised him to be a nice and responsible man.”Police have arrested three suspects — Ssebagala Noordin, Ayebazibwe Roden, and Namukose Juliet — and investigations are continuing as detectives pursue other individuals identified in the video footage from the scene.CCTV evidence confirming Sydney’s innocence is now part of the police record. Whether it translates into the full accountability the family and the rugby community are calling for will be determined by what happens in court.Sydney Gongodyo will be laid to rest today, Monday, in Sironko District, eastern Uganda. He will be buried as what the CCTV camera confirms he was: an innocent man who crossed a road at the wrong moment, refused to run because he had nothing to run from, and died for it.Precious never got to Nabisunsa Girls School that day. Her brother never came home.The real thief is still on the boda boda.The post My Son Was an Innocent ByStander: Sydney Gongodyo Father Speaks Out on Son’s Burtal Murder was written by the awesome team at Campus Bee.