A tutor of the Asante Mampong Midwifery College in the Ashanti Region and his brother, painfully lost their lives on Wednesday dawn after they were mistaken for armed robbers by police officers who had been called to a robbery scene.
The police officers had been called to quell a robbery ongoing at the school when the shooting took place.
Confirming the rather bizarre incident to Citi News, ASP Yusif Mohammed, the Ashanti Regional Police Public Relations Officer, said the regional police command is saddened by the incident which occurred around 2:00am on Wednesday.
He explained that the two men who were spotted moving on a motorbike when the police arrived at the said robbery scene, refused to stop despite instructions from the police.
He said in the process, the police fired shots at them after the pillion rider showed an object that looked like a gun.
“Early this morning [Wednesday] at about 2:00am, there was a distress call from the Mampong Midwifery Training School to the effect that some armed robbers were attacking the home there, so a patrol team was dispatched to deal with the situation and according to the men on patrol, when they got to the scene, they were told that the robbers had just taken a particular route.”
[contextly_sidebar id=”MFfGO5ZnHsUeD60QsaW6OCW7xZfxwTEh”]ASP Tanko narrated that, while the team pursued the routed the robbers had allegedly taken, “they saw a motorbike moved with speed so their thinking was that those were the robbers so they pursued them and tried as much as possible to stop them but they did not stop.”
He added that “the person who was sitting behind the motor rider had something in his hand an object and turned towards the police; so when the person was turning, they mistook the turn to be that he was turning to shoot so they quickly fired. Later on, it was discovered that they were not the criminals but they were people who were running around trying to get assistance for the victims who were attacked by the robbers,” he noted.
The Police PRO added that the have dispatched personnel to the school to investigate the matter after which the appropriate sanctions will be taken against the officers involved.
“It’s very unfortunate and the regional command is not happy about it. Our condolences go out to the family. The Regional Commander has sent a team of investigators to Mampong to investigate the cause and brief him on the findings.”
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By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana