A 72 year-old pensioner, Emmanuel Kwasi Ayeh, was murdered in cold blood in broad daylight by armed robbers last Friday, February 29, at his residence at Dansoman Estate, near the area known as Zodiac.

In carrying out their gruesome act, the robbers tied the arms, legs and neck of the victim with flexible wire and strangled him to death, causing blood to ooze from his nose and mouth.

The robbers are said to have ransacked a couple of rooms and made away with an unspecified number of valuables and personal effects including cloths, a mobile phone and a DVD player. They apparently entered the house through another house behind it, at a time when nobody was at home.

It is believed that a struggle had ensued between the assailants and their victim, a recovering cancer patient, who had returned home from hospital and chanced upon the robbers in the act.

Upon his return from the hospital, around lunch time, Mr Ayeh, who saw the door to his room ajar, is said to have rung his daughter at work and enquired from her as to whether she had been in the house.

After preliminary investigations, the Dansoman police have ruled out a pre-meditated murder and said the motive was robbery.

The police say the deceased's assailants, who were alleged to be four, include a prime suspect.

"In this robbery which occurred in the afternoon, the police are not ruling out an internal orchestration," said Superintendent Alex Yartey Tawiah, the Dansoman district police commander.

Neighbours too believe that Mr Ayeh must have surprised the robbers at work and that they probably thought there was nobody at home and they killed him because he had recognized some one or some of them.

Supt Tawiah told the Times on Monday that "By all intents and purposes, investigations revealed that the robbery/murder occurred in the afternoon but the crime was not detected until about 6 p.m. "That was when Chibike Umanta, grandson of the deceased, had returned home from school.

Herbertta Bonney, a neighbour, whose account was no different from that of the police, told the Times earlier that Umanta, upon entering the room, heard a radio in the room blaring.

He later saw a machete lying on his grandfather's bed and his grandfather lying in a supine position with blood stains on his mouth and nostrils and heaps of clothes piled on the upper part of his body.

Madam Bonney said it was then that the boy rushed to her house to inform her that something had happened to his grandfather.

She said Mrs Felicia Ayeh, wife of the deceased, had at the time travelled. A report was made to the Dansoman Police who came to convey the body to the Korle-Bu Hospital mortuary for autopsy.

The Times learnt that Mr Ayeh, a staunch Methodist, had been preparing to go to Church at Mount Olivet Church, Dansoman, on March 2 to thank God for his recovery from cancer.

Police investigations are continuing.

The crime rate in the Dansoman community involving street and residential robbery as well as car snatching is said to be on the ascendancy.

Between February 22 and March 1, a total of 16 of such crimes had been reported, said Superintendent Tawiah.

He said such acts were usually perpetrated by youth between the ages of 17 and 25 years who normally wield cutlasses, cudgels and sometimes locally manufactured pistols to cow their victims before robbing them of their valuables.

Supt. Tawiah attributed the high incidence of crime in Dansoman to the fast rate of urbanisation in the area, saying, "Dansoman is highly populated, elitist, commercialised with the springing up of shops, night clubs and drinking joints, creating a fertile ground for robbers to operate."

As part of measures to contain the situation, he said the police have intensified their day and night patrols. Neighbourhood Watch Committees are also being encouraged.

He appealed to philanthropists and businesses to support them with logistics since the government alone cannot provide such facilities. Supt Tawiah also urged the public to provide them with reliable information to enable the police to track down criminals.