Pensioner Attacked By Robbers

A 64-year-old pensioner, Mr Theophilus Kwasi Boaitey, escaped death after six suspected armed robbers opened fire on him and seriously wounded him in the forehead and left rib.

The victim has just been discharged from the Akyem Oda Government Hospital, where he was admitted for a week but three of the pellets are yet to be removed from his ribs.

Telling his nightmarish experience to the Daily Graphic at Akyem Asawase in the Birim South District in the Eastern Region, Mr Boaitey, a former employee of Ghana Telecom in Kumasi, said around 1 a.m. on March 16, this year, he was awoken from his sleep at Asawase by the barking of his dog.

He said when he came to the compound, he saw some men hiding in the hedge used in fencing the house so he quickly rushed into his bedroom to pick his pump-action gun to defend himself.

According to him, no sooner had he entered the room than the robbers broke the door of his hall with a cement block and rushed on him, quickly collected the weapon and started assaulting him.

He said two of the robbers started ransacking his bedroom while two others entered the bedroom of his wife, Mrs Susana Boaitey, to ransack the place.

Mr Boaitey stated that after stealing more than GH¢500 from him and his wife, and a gold wristwatch, gold and silver jewelleries, wedding rings and his wife's mobile phone, one of the robbers picked a hammer from his drawer and hit him on the forehead with it.

He said while struggling in pain on the floor, the robbers allegedly fired two shots at his ribs from pistols, making blood to sprinkle at every part of the room.

Mr Boaitey said when the first shot was fired one of the robbers, who was standing in the hall, shouted, “Kwasi, why did you shoot him?,” adding that when the second shot was fired, the same person shouted: “Let's go, we did not come to kill the man.”

He said when his wife started screaming for help, one of the robbers rushed into her bedroom, put the gun into her ear and ordered her to keep quiet or she would be shot.

After the robbers had fled the scene around 1.30 a.m., people in the neighbourhood who had heard the scream of the woman, went to their aid but it was too late, the robbers were gone.

They sent him to the Oda Government Hospital.

An X-ray report the victim showed this writer showed that three pellets were still in his ribs.

Mr Boaitey said the doctor who treated him said he decided not to operate on him and remove the pellets now because he had lost much blood as a result of the profuse bleeding after he had been shot.

When the Daily Graphic contacted the Akyem Swedru District Police Commander, Deputy Superintendent of Police (SDP) Paul Aduhene, he confirmed the robbery, and added that all the six robbers had been apprehended.

He gave their names as Kwasi Appiah, Justice Jones, Richard Afrifah, alias Gentle; Kwame Bimpong, alias Nana Kwame; Kwadwo Fosuhene, alias Taller; and John Adzewoda.

DSP Aduhene said the Akyem Swedru Circuit Court had remanded all of them in prison custody pending further investigations into the matter.

Story by Samuel Kyei-Boateng