The deceased
The prosecution in the case of a shop manager of West Hills Mall branch of electrical appliances dealer, Max Buy Ghana Limited, Boafo Osei Kwame, who is accused of allegedly tasering a young man which lead to his death, has indicated that they are waiting on the advice of the Attorney General to determine the way forward.
Inspector Maxwell Kwakye, yesterday told the court that they have forwarded a duplicate docket as well as the pathologist’s report on the deceased to the Office of the Attorney General, and are waiting for his advice.
He, therefore, prayed the court to adjourn the matter to give them time to receive the advice, and the Sowutuom Magistrate Court adjourned the case to March 2, 2023.
The accused, Boafo Osei Kwame, who is on a provisional charge of murder, was hauled before the Sowutuom Magistrate Court for allegedly tasering the deceased, Shadrack Allu, with his personal taser while a police officer struggled to arrest the deceased.
Court documents indicate that the deceased and his friend were moving suspiciously in the shopping mall on January 30, 2023, giving Sergeant Daniel Abeiku, a police officer stationed at the mall a reason to search a backpack he was carrying, but he refused and began running out of the shopping mall.
Background
A gospel singer, Perpetual Didier, recently accused some police officers of allegedly killing his 32-year-old brother, Shadrach Allu, at the West Hills Mall in Weija.
The singer, in her Facebook Live, suggested that the deceased was assaulted by the police officers and was later shocked with a taser, leading to his death.
But court documents indicate that the deceased after being signaled by the police who requested to check his backpack, removed a substance wrapped in black polythene, which he put in his back pocket and began running out of the mall.
“The policeman pursued the deceased and got him arrested. The deceased struggled with the policeman when he was being cuffed and, in the process, he removed the said wrapped black polythene from his back pocket and swallowed it,” the documents say.
The prosecution’s preliminary fact sheet indicated that the accused, Boafo Osei Kwame, who saw the incident between the deceased and the police officer, rushed to the scene, removed his personal taser and shocked the deceased, rendering him unconscious.
A statement by the Ghana Police Service indicates that a postmortem examination conducted on the deceased in the presence of his lawyer and family revealed that he died from asphyxiation and obstruction of the airway.
“The postmortem examination conducted also led to the retrieval from the throat of the deceased a total of eight zipped bags of dried leaves suspected to be Indian hemp tied in a piece of black polythene.
“A test conducted on the substance tested positive for cannabis, when submitted to the forensic lab for examination in the presence of all parties involved in the case,” the statement read.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak