Eleven-Year-Old Boy kills Brother

An eleven-year-old Class Three pupil of Catholic Primary School at Akrowin near Konongo in the Asante Akim North District has allegedly killed his three-month-old brother in protest at his mother's refusal to give him money to buy an exercise book.

The suspect was said to have sneaked into the room where the deceased and his twin brother were sleeping at a time when their mother had gone to sell her wares and battered the deceased's head until he died.

An autopsy report described the cause of death as Cerebral Anoxia, which Inspector Adu Ofori, a prosecutor with the Konongo Police, who briefed the Daily Graphic at the weekend, likened to strangulation.

Sometime last month, he said the deceased's mother, Akosuah Ataa gave the suspect and his brother ¢2,000 to go to school but the suspect demanded more money, which his mother refused to give.

Inspector Ofori said the suspect became angry and threatened to kill the twins if his mother did not give him the money.

Ataa, however, did not bother and left for the market only to return later to find one of her twins dead with a whitish substance oozing from his mouth and nostrils.

She, therefore, reported the matter to the police.

Inspector Ofori said the suspect described the way he killed the deceased to the police when he was sent to the police station.

According to him, he pressed the topmost part of the deceased's head. He was subsequently arraigned before the Konongo Juvenile Court presided over by Mr John Naberese, who remanded him in a juvenile remand home in Kumasi.

His remand, however, exposed a weakness in the laws of the country as the home refused to accept him because he was not 12 years, the constitutionally mandated age for anybody to be liable to crime.

The police took him back to the court and he was granted bail to report regularly to the police. The police, Inspector Ofori said, were looking for a way out in the prosecution of the matter.

Story by Kofi Antwi,