<<Print>>

An 18-year-old suspected robber has been lynched at Ashaiman in the Greater Accra region. The body of Joshua Tetteh was found in a pool of blood on the premises of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at Roman-down, a suburb of Ashaiman. The deceased, according to residents of the area, was a primary six pupil who met his untimely death when he was chased out of the Ashaiman Fitter Line by his attackers who claimed that he had earlier on stole a car battery from that area. A source narrated to Daily Guide that a caretaker of the church, a certain Mensah Formedja, on seeing the body of the suspected robber, rushed to the Ashaiman police station and lodged a complaint at about 7.20am. The caretaker returned to the premises after some minutes with policeman and an elder of the church only to realise that the body was nowhere to be found. The situation, according to sources, did not please the police as they immediately launched investigations into the case. They questioned the eyewitnesses who had converged on the scene and it was gathered that some relatives of the deceased had come for his body and rushed it to a hospital, perhaps to see if something could be done to revive him. It was then that the policemen started combing hospitals in Ashaiman in search of the victim but they could not located the pupil�s body until they decided to move to Tema where they saw a body believed to be that of the primary-six lad, in the emergency and accident unit of the Tema General Hospital. The source narrated that a senior nurse on duty said it was brought by someone who claimed to be the deceased robber�s elder brother and mentioned his name as Seth Tetteh. Dr Frederick Missah, the doctor on duty at the time of arrival of the body, was reported to have conducted some examination and confirmed the suspected robber was dead before arrival. The body, according to the Daily Guide source, had several machete wounds, with a medical report suggesting he might have died from excessive bleeding. Later in an interview, a senior brother of the victim, Seth Tetteh, told Daily Guide that the deceased woke-up at about 3.00am with the excuse that he was going to collect his school fees from their father who was not staying in the same house, adding that their father always left his abode early for work. �Earlier in the morning, there was a report that a certain young man had been killed with the body lying at the premises of the church. It did not occur to me to go there until word got to me that the body was that of my younger brother,� Tetteh said, adding that all his family was told was that his younger brother had gone to steal a car battery when he was chased by some unknown persons who did not waste time in lynching him that dawn. According to an eyewitness, Kwami, at about 3.30am, he heard unusual screams and came out from his room but was scared to get closer to the scene as he stood from a distance and watched while the victim was being lynched. He explained that it was not clear to him what exactly happened since he was a bit far from the action spot. He said the victim�s pursuers had earlier on chased him from a spot and in a bid to escape, he jumped into the premises of the church where they meted out instant justice, using all sorts of implements including concrete blocks, wood and machetes. According to the police detective who visited the scene, the mob might have used sharp cutlasses in inflicting the multiple wounds on the body of the primary-six student. The police detective said that the blood oozing from the nose of the corpse suggested that he was violently attacked by a mob. The body, meanwhile, is said to have been transferred from the Tema General Hospital to the Police Hospital morgue in Accra pending autopsy as investigation into the case continues.