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19.02.2018 Crime & Punishment

Achimota Student Killer Freed

By CitifmOnline.com
Achimota Student Killer Freed
19.02.2018 LISTEN

An Accra High court has quashed the three-year jail sentence handed to the 17-year-old Achimota Senior High School student who shot and killed his colleague.

According to the court presided over Justice Kofi Dogu, the trial judge at the juvenile court erred in demanding a social enquiry report only after sentencing the accused despite being required by law to do so before sentencing.

The ruling follows an appeal by the lawyers of the boy, arguing that the sentence handed to him was too harsh.

They also claimed the trial judge lacked jurisdiction to hear the matter.

The accused’s sentence was overturned by a High Court, which held that there had been a miscarriage of justice because the Juvenile Court delivered a verdict without a social enquiry report.

He was found guilty of manslaughter by the Accra Juvenile court in September 2017 during proceedings that were heard in-camera.

Having been 16-years-old at the time of the incident on January 4, 2017, he was tried by a Juvenile Court.

The boy, who resides at Community Eight in Tema, is said to have gone for his father's gun, which was under a bed with the intention of firing shots into the air.

He, however, ended up killing his friend, Lily Donkor, a third-year student of the same school.

The boy told police that his intent was to fire the gun into the air a claim corroborated by the police, adding however that the weight of the gun changed the course of the bullet, which hit the deceased.


By: Fred Djabanor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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