A 24-year-old excavator operator apprentice has unfortunately drowned in an abandoned mining pit at Ntoboroso in the Ashanti Region.
Randolph Oti Boateng, popularly known as ‘Paa Kwasi’, and his colleagues were washing their excavator when he accidentally slipped into the deep pit.
The shocking incident attracted scores of people to the scene, who helped to rescue Boateng, but it was too late as Boateng had already given up the ghost.
A Nyinahin District Police report said the incident occurred on September 9, 2025, at 3:30pm, and a certain Isaac Acheampong, foreman of a small scale mining site at Ntoboroso, reported it to the police same day.
“He reported that same day about 1530 hours, Randolph Oti Boateng alias Paa Kwasi, an excavator operator apprentice, aged 24 years, now deceased, and two other apprentices went to an abandoned mining pit around their site to wash their excavator.
“That in the course of events the deceased slipped into the pit engulfed with water and got drowned,” part of the police statement, sighted by the paper, disclosed.
The police report added that “Search party was immediately dispatched with the prospect of rescuing him alive but he was retrieved from the pit dead.”
According to the police, the lifeless body of Boateng has since been deposited at Community Mortuary at Nyinahin, awaiting autopsy as investigations continue.
FROM I.F. Joe Awuah, Kumasi