Police Search For Truck Drivers

The drivers of the two articulated trucks involved in the tragic motor accident at Okyereko, near Winneba, in which 41 people died are nowhere to be found.

The Winneba Police have, therefore, mounted a search for them. They are John Yamoah and Ibrahim Yusif.

“The drivers are not dead because we have checked and there is no trace of their bodies. If any member of the public has information of their whereabouts, he or she should please let us know,” the Winneba District Police Commander, DSP Nicholas Gasu, appealed in an interview with the Daily Graphic yesterday.

He said the articulated trucks, with registration numbers AS 8504 D and AS 1800 F, belonging to Charman Invest Limited in Kumasi, had been impounded by the police.

Yamoah was in charge of one of the trucks and Yusif, the other.

A STIF Mercedes Benz bus, with registration number 457 AR 01 and travelling from Cote d'Ivoire to Togo through Ghana, was around 11.00 p.m. on May 10, 2007 involved in an accident with the articulated truck with registration number AS 8504 D which was travelling from Accra to Takoradi with cocoa beans.

Thirty-seven of the 50 passengers on board the bus died in the accident.

DSP Gasu stated that the absence of the drivers of the articulated trucks was affecting investigations, since “they must tell us what exactly happened”.

The investigator handling the case, Lance Corporal Francis Semana, told the Daily Graphic that so far 23 of the 31 bodies sent to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital had been identified by their relatives, with eight of the bodies having been handed over to their families for burial, while the remaining 15 were awaiting post mortem examination. He added that the identification exercise was still ongoing.

According to him, 18 of the 27 injured persons had been discharged.

He said two injured persons were currently on admission at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, one of them an eight-year-old Liberian boy who is in critical condition.

Lance Corporal Semana said two other injured persons were on admission at the Koforidua Government Hospital, two at the Holy Trinity Hospital and one at the Cape Coast Hospital.

Story by Emmanuel Bonney