The second week of February— the week of love— has ended on a savagely sour note in the Upper East region with a man butchering the love of his life hours after a secondary-school Mathematics teacher was found dead in a bush with a noose around his neck.

Reports made available to Starr News by the Bolgatanga Municipal Police Command indicate that Anafo Amoah, a 45-year-old man said to have been under a mental disorder treatment for some time at the Bongo District Hospital, had in times past repeatedly told his wife, Abanema Amoah, that he would kill her one day and take his own life as well.

He finally made good on his threats at dawn Friday (yesterday) when he drew a knife and gored her deep in the lower corner of the right jaw. He also slit his own throat with same knife and slumped into coma at his home inside Yorogo-Adologo, a suburb of the regional capital, Bolgatanga.

A daughter-in-law, whose name police mentioned as Donata Abene, discovered the horror when she, with a sleeping baby strapped to her back and an earthen pot held to a rag on her head, was heading out of the yard to draw water from a well. Screaming at the top of her lungs, Donata called everybody in the neighbourhood to the bloody scene.

A shocked crowd listened as the couple’s traumatised 12-year-old son narrated how his father thrust a knife through his pleading mother until she died and he ‘repentantly’ threw the weapon far outside the compound after an uneasy attempt to kill himself, too, with it.

A police team met the man lying beside his wife at a doorstep to one of the red-earth rooms. The security team took photographs of the crime scene as separate streams of blood from both the unconscious man and his slain wife ran hurriedly through each other on a cracked cement floor of the wailing compound.

Take Threats Seriously— CHRAJ warns

A sensation of terror descended heavily on the Out-Patient Department (OPD) when the dying man arrived at the Upper East Regional Hospital, accompanied by the body of his wife, on a police pickup.

Hours after Mr. Amoah had been rushed into an emergency ward, the police returned to the OPD to tell Starr News the suspect had been stabilised pending a psychiatric examination to ascertain his mental wellness and a court trial for murder and for attempted suicide if found to be of sound mind.

A shockwave is ripping through the region, rattling the spines of residents everywhere, particularly in the regional capital, following Friday’s gruesome domestic violence. Whilst some are in doubt the children, who saw how their mother begged their father in vain for her life before she was knifed in cold blood, would ever recover from a trauma that did not come without a long notice, a number of individuals and institutions, including the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), have strongly highlighted the need for people to always take threats very seriously by notifying the appropriate quarters early enough for redress.

“We should not be taking things for granted. Somebody just made a statement. You do not have the capacity to interpret the statement to mean that this person doesn’t mean harm. Whatever it is, you need to let the security agencies know because a threat is a threat; you don’t know when the person would execute the threat.

“I do not know whether the woman had reported the threats to the police or not. If she had reported the matter to the police, the police could have invited the man to interrogate him. If it was proven that the man was indeed not well, they would be taking steps to separate them. We shouldn’t be taking things for granted. Never say it is just a passing statement,” warned the Upper East Regional Director of CHRAJ, Abdulai Jaladeen, in a Starr News interview.

Suicide Teacher was worried about Sick Child— Student discloses

Whatever might have also led 38-year-old Abasiya Zakari Aweeom, a Mathematics master at the Gowrie Senior High School in the Bongo District, into self-destruction by hanging is still a puzzle to his friends who were initially guessed to have an answer.

According to the police, the tragedy struck at Yorogo-Tingre, an area not far from where Anafo stabbed his wife to death.

As she spoke with a grieving tone in a Starr News telephone talk, the Headmistress of the school, Margaret Akparibo, could only confirm the horror was chanced upon outside campus as the teacher, like some of his colleagues, was resident out of school premises. And her grief is no less in pitch than the anguish that has taken over an entire campus of a deprived school.

“He has a child who has been in a hopeless condition at a hospital. He had been telling students that anytime they don’t see him again, they should take it like that,” a student, who is said to know much about the late master, confided in a relative Saturday morning.

Another student told Starr News: “He came that day (Thursday), signed the teachers’ attendance book at the administration block. Some of my friends said he taught the first-year students. Others said they saw him briefly in a year-three class. But I also heard he didn’t teach that day; he only signed the attendance book, and left. The next thing we heard was he had taken his own life. No reason was given.”

Police Claim no Marks of Violence on Corpse

The body of the Elective Mathematics teacher was found hanging from a neem branch, in a white long-sleeve shirt, late Thursday.

There was no suicide note by his side, except his motorbike— a blue Haojin automobile with registration number M-14-UE 245— in a bush. Police, after taking snapshots of the hanging corpse and depositing it at the morgue of the Upper East Regional Hospital, told newsmen there were also no marks of violence on his body.

A suicide watch counsellor in the region has, in the wake of the latest presumed suicide, urged the public to be more “suicide-sensitive”.

“It is good for us to always watch out. When you see your relative, friend or neighbour showing unusual changes, doing things which you think are very funny, give them a trusted ear. The school didn’t observe these changes. When we observe these changes, we should rush to those who can support,” advised Peter Apuko Awuni.