Editorial News of Thursday, 21 January 1999

Source: --

Ghanaian Times

The Ghanaian Times in a front page screamer: "ABDUCTION ATTEMPT ABORTED", reports that the a timely warning shot fired by a vigilant private security man, saved 22-year-old Dorothy Ollenu from being stabbed to death by a taxi driver and three other accomplices - two women and a man on the car.

The incident occurred on Saturday, January 9, this year, at a taxi bay opposite the Nima Police Station, midway between the Kwame Nkrumah Circle and Sankara Circle on the Ring Road Central.

Narrating her story, Dorothy who could not remember the registration number of the vehicle, described the car as a Hyundai Pony painted in the standard taxi colours with the inscription "The Lord is my Shepherd" at the back. She said on boarding the taxi, one of the two women on the car asked her to take the front seat which was empty. She did so and a man later joined the women in the back seat before the driver took off.

Dorothy said the man, whom she had earlier on heard speaking to the women in a Nigerian dialect, pulled her braided hair and asked her to shut up when she complained. Suddenly, the driver pulled out a pen knife, slashed her skirt, while one of the women covered her mouth with a handkerchief. When she attempted a struggle to free herself, the driver exclaimed: "Hurry up and do the thing:!" One of the women then stabbed her in the right arm and back with a pair of scissors.

Realising the danger in which she was, she bit the driver making him lose control of the steering Swerving the car off the road. On hearing a gun shot, the abductors pushed Dorothy out of the car and sped off before a private security man and a police despatch rider came to the aid of exhausted Dorothy. All efforts to trace the adductors proved futile.

Dorothy who sustained some injuries when she was pushed out of the car, was treated and discharged at the Police Hospital in Accra.

GRi