Lessons From A Houseboy’s Killing Instinct

We woke up yesterday to the disturbing story about a young man allegedly killing the man who stretched a helping hand to him.

It is one of the stories which breaks hearts and makes people wonder whether they should not review kindness as a way of life.

The nature of a person can hardly be determined from his countenance.

The visage of the suspect shows a person who can hardly kill a fly yet he has killed not a stranger but the man who provided him with a source of livelihood doing it single-handedly and callously.

He appears to have harboured ill-feelings against his benefactor.

Otherwise why would a simple argument over the cost of maintenance of the house lead to such a gory act, as the story suggested.

Nobody who hears the story would not spare some moments to wonder why the man who was in the country to attend a funeral should die the way he did at the hands of a callous villain.

We must be security conscious in whatever we do. We are unable to tell how the deceased met his killer and to even engage him to manage his property.

Most people engage persons about who they know little. It is only a matter of time that such persons would discover when it is too late the killers or robbers they have engaged.

For only a small fee, the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) can do the necessary background checks on persons who we intend engaging for employment to take care of our properties or even sharing our roofs with us. This is information many people do not know about.

Before we bring people to come and live under the same roof with us, let us go the extra mile of determining who they are.

Rushing to live with people we do not know can lead to consequences such as that which prompted this commentary.

When such rather challenging developments occur, we must out of necessity, pick lessons so that we would obviate repeat of the anomalous situations in future.

We are sure that had further checks been done on the suspect, it would have posted his negative DNA.

The deceased trusted a man he knew little or even nothing about.

Another important lesson we must learn is not to engage in the kind of brawl the deceased had with his caretaker when there was nobody in the house but the two of them.

We must be our neighbour's keeper. Hardly can the kind of murder which took place occur without neighbours picking some signals about them.

Giving the nature of Ghanaians, even when such calls for help are heard, it is most likely that nobody would venture to the place to lend a helping hand. This does not augur well for the management of security, a shared responsibility which should not be restricted to the law enforcement agents only.

The deceased, it was established, screamed and called for help in the heat of death but nobody approached the house to ascertain what was amiss.

We are saddened that it took a female friend of the deceased to come to the house to find out whether everything was okay with him.

Although the suspect denied her entry, we think that she should have been curious as to even call in the Police.

She did not and but for the confession of the houseboy upon interrogation, the truth of the matter would have been delayed.