The late Abraham Tetteh
THE Koforidua Magistrate Court “A” in the Eastern Region has remanded into police custody two suspects who were arrested last week in connection with the robbery incident that led to the death of an ambulance driver on the Aseeseso stretch of the Somanya to Adukrom highway in the Okere District.
The accused persons, Umaru Abubakar, 26, and Osmanu Abukari, 25, were remanded for two weeks to reappear on February 26, 2021.
The plea of the suspects was not taken by the court and the prosecutor, Sgt. George Defia, urged the court to remand them to assist police to track and arrest the other accomplices at large.
According to the prosecutor, other victims attacked included Priscilla Owusu, a nursing mother, Racheal Owusu, a Senior Emergency Medical Technician of the Ambulance Service, and Deborah Teye Tsornyake, a trader.
He said the accused persons are Fulani herdsmen residing in Akuni No. 2 in the region.
The robbery gang wearing black face masks and wielding short and long guns laid ambush at Akuni No.1 on the Somanya to Adukrom highway where there is no phone reception, mounted roadblock and carried out their illegal operation targeting the victims mobile phones and cash, and causing the death of the ambulance driver.
The driver in charge of Yilo Krobo Constituency Ambulance vehicle with registration Number GV 644-20 was conveying a pregnant woman who was in preterm labour (31 weeks) from Akuse Government Hospital to the Koforidua Regional Hospital since Akuse Hospital had no incubator, when the robbers pounced on them.
The ambulance driver was shot in the eye, and the robbers collected from Rachael Owusu at gunpoint GH¢11 and took her mobile phone and her mobile money password.
A Police officer – Corporal Christian Opoku, the complainant in the case, was also driving a Toyota Sienna vehicle from Adukrom direction towards Somanya but managed to make a U-turn and escaped upon seeing the robbers.
One of the victims, who was in one of the vehicles robbed by the bandits, got down from the vehicle after the robbers had fled and drove the ambulance together with the injured officer and the pregnant woman to Tetteh Quarshie Memorial Hospital.
The police arrested the two accused persons upon tip-off but they denied their involvement during their caution statement.
FROM Daniel Bampoe, Koforidua