A Koforidua Circuit Court presided by Marian Afoh, has granted bail to five teachers and two drivers of Bright Senior High School (SHS), at Kukurantumi, in a sum from GHC10,000 to GHC15,000 with sureties.
They all pleaded not guilty on all 10 charges which included; abetment of crime to wit assault, abetment of crime to wit causing unlawful damage, abetment of crime to wit stealing, four counts of assault, one count of causing unlawful damage and two counts of stealing and are to re-appear on December 1, 2020.
The accused persons are; Bright Amponsah, 41, Proprietor of the Bright SHS, Abdul Aziz Amadu, 28, a teacher, Batsa Eric Teye, 28, a teacher, Abayah Aaron Teye, 28, a teacher, Bernard Adom, 30, a teacher, all of the Bright SHS, Batsa Simon Narh, 26 and Fredrick Amegah, 32, both drivers of the same school.
Police Chief Inspector Thomas Yaro, presenting the facts of the case to the court said, the complainants David Nii Djan Mensah, Alfred Okine Jerry, Jacob Addico and Emmanuel Asare are all officials of the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC)in Accra.
On August 6, at about 8:30 am, the complainants who were part of the WAEC inspectorate team arrived at the Bright SHS on their usual inspection of the on-going West Africa Schools Certificate Examination (WASCE), the candidates were then writing the social studies paper and a candidate was spotted by Jacob Addico, a member of the team possessing a foreign material at one of the examination halls.
Mr Addico, then asked the said candidate to hand over the foreign material, but he became agitated and started struggling with him, in the process, the other students writing the paper became infuriated and joined the said candidate to cause commotion in the examination hall and attacked him and started to beat him up.
Bright Amponsah, proprietor of the school was at one of the entrances of the school trying to enter the hall, but was prevented by Alfred Jerry Okine from doing so, which offended him and he started calling the students to come out and attack the WAEC official, the already agitated students, heeded his call and together with the accused persons, attacked the officials with stones, sticks and other missiles.
The complainants sustained various degrees of injuries, the accused persons also caused damage to an INFINIX HOT 5 mobile phone belonging to Jacob Addico, David Nii Djan Mensah also lost an amount of GHC2,000 from his back pocket and a Huawei mobile phone while Emmanuel Asare also lost his Iphone 6s, a recording device and an amount of GHC150, in the cause of the attack.
A distress call was made to the police and upon arrival at the scene, the accused persons were identified to the police and they were subsequently arrested, the complainants were issued with police medical forms to attend hospital for treatment, which they did and returned the forms duly endorsed by the Medical Officer of the New Tafo Akim Government Hospital.
On August 17, an identification parade was conducted, during which eight other students were identified by the complainants as among those who attacked and assaulted them on the day of the incident.
However, the other eight identified during the parade were at large, and they included; Narh Bana Ray Awartey, Angela Alanyo, Dunyo Ray, Derrick Aheku, Agbeve Stella, Abubakar Muhamed, Tetteh Solomon and Ofosu Nicholas.
GNA