A policeman was last Friday gunned down during a gun battle between a team of personnel and a notorious robber at Asofan, near Ofankor in the Greater Accra Region.
The deceased has been identified as Corporal Francis Aballo, 37.
Another policeman whose name was given as Corporal David Anaba sustained injuries but he has since been treated and discharged.
The team had laid ambush at a house at Asofan where, according to police intelligence, a suspected notorious robber was hiding.
It is said that the suspect, on seeing the police, started shooting indiscriminately.
The suspect, identified as Kingsley Owusu, managed to escape arrest and has been declared wanted by the Accra Regional Police Command.
Upon a search conducted later in Owusu’s room a big travelling bag containing two pump action guns, two pistols, six live cartridges, a sharp knife, three caps, a reflector and a shirt were found.
Attack
Briefing the Daily Graphic, the Public Relations Officer of the Accra Regional Police Command, Mrs Affia Tenge, said on May 21, 2016, the police received complaints about a robbery attack on a family which had arrived in Ghana from Canada to perform the final funeral rites of a relative.
She said the family members were attacked at the entrance of their house when they got there from the airport.
She said at gunpoint, the suspected robber deprived them of all their belongings, including their money and personal effects.
Mrs Tenge said following the report on the robbery attack, the police started hunting for the persons behind it and finally zeroed in on Owusu.
Hint
Exactly a week after the robbery incident, she said, the police had information that the suspected robber was hiding in an uncompleted building at Asofan.
Mrs Tenge said about 6:50 p.m. last Friday, a team of policemen from the Accra Regional Police Command was detailed to cause the arrest of the suspected robber.
“It was in the course of the operation that an exchange of gunshots ensued between the robber and the police,” she said.
She described Corporal Aballo as a hard-working young man who joined the service in 2007.
For his hard work, she said, he was recently promoted on meritorious grounds from Lance Corporal to Corporal.
He is survived by a wife and five children.
Police killings
Cpl Aballo is the third policeman to be shot dead by armed robbers in the Greater Accra Region in the last three years.
On January 7, 2015, Constable Prince Akata, who was in his late 20s, was shot dead in a shootout with suspected armed robbers near Weija.
In 2014, Lance Corporal Iddi Braimah, 35, died at the Police Hospital after he was shot by a three-member robbery gang at Ashaiman.
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