Police Intensify Investigations Into Bizarre Death Of 4 Kids

The police are still investigating the bizarre incident that claimed the lives of four siblings in Bechem in the Tano South District in the Brong Ahafo Region last Wednesday, October 15, 2014. Briefing the Daily Graphic on the sad incident, the Brong Ahafo Regional Police Public Relations Officer (PRO), Assistant Superintendent of Police Christopher Tawia, said Mallam Zakaria Adogbru, a Beninois spiritualist resident in Bechem, reported to the police in Bechem that he returned from town and detected that his four children � Ali Tanko, 12; Mohammed Alidu, nine; Arafat Adogbru, five, and Atika Adogbru, two � were missing from his house. He said a couple of minutes later, information was received to the effect that all the four children had been trapped to death in an unserviceable deep freezer in his room. ASP Tawia said the police had taken the bodies of the children to the Bechem Government Hospital for preservation and autopsy. Background The four siblings were found dead in an unused deep freezer at Maame Ntiriwaa Junction, a suburb of Bechem, last Wednesday. They are Tanko, a Class Two pupil of the Bechem Demonstration School; Arafat, a KG Two pupil of the same school, and Moses, a KG Two pupil of the Anglican Basic School, all boys, and Atika, a girl, a pupil of the Cr�che Department of the Joy International School. According to eyewitnesses who pleaded anonymity, the children did not go to school last Tuesday, October 14, 2014, because of financial problems. Parents They said the children�s Nigerian mother, whose name was given only as Auntie Mary, a trader, cooked for the children and left for town to sell about 3 p.m. According to them, Auntie Mary left the children in the care of their father, Mallam Zakaria, a known spiritualist in the area. Mallam Zakaria was also said to have left for town, leaving the children alone in the house about 5 p.m. When Auntie Mary returned home and could not find her children in the house, she went to the nearby houses where the children always went to play with their friends to search for them. Search party After an unsuccessful search by the mother, some of the residents joined in the search. The eyewitnesses said after many attempts to trace the children had yielded no results, the search party went to the children�s home, where they instinctively opened one unused deep freezer which had been abandoned in one of the rooms, only to find all the children dead in it. They, however, said there were no bloodstains in the deep freezer or on the bodies of the children. Meanwhile, both Auntie Mary and Mallam Zakaria have been arrested by the police, while the deep freezer in which the bodies were found has been deposited at the Bechem Police Station.