Suspected Thief Escapes Death

A young man suspected to be a thief was yesterday saved by a ‘Good Samaritan’ from being lynched at Abeka Lapaz in the Greater Accra region.

The young man whose name was not immediately known at the time of filing this report was alleged to have stolen a shirt from a boutique.

In an interview with Today, the owner of the shop, Madam Akosua, claimed the alleged thief pretended he was buying a shirt, “but as soon as I turned to attend to other customers, he took one of the shirts which costs GHC60.00 and bolted away.”

However, she said, luck eluded him, as her daughter who was at the shop with her at the time, saw him when he took the shirt and subsequently raised an alarm.

The suspected chief , she continued, was then given a hot chase, and as he tried to escape, he jumped into a moving vehicle which was heading towards Tabora Alhaji, a suburb of Accra, but the passengers in that vehicle threw him out of the car, shouting “julɔ julɔ,” literally meaning ‘thief’ in the local parlance.

The mob, who, according to her, was angry pounced on him kicking and slapping him indiscriminately.

“In fact, he would have been beaten to death had it not been the timely intervention of a pastor who stepped in and prevented the mob from beating him further. By then, he was bleeding profusely from cuts on his head, eyes, nose and almost all parts of his body,” the owner of the boutique narrated.

“Someone from the crowd hit my head and my left eye at the same time leaving me with cuts on both parts of my body,” the alleged thief tearfully told Today.

However, he denied being a thief saying, “I did not steal any dress and moreover, I’m not thief too.”