Crime & Punishment of Thursday, 21 May 2015

Source: GNA

Six suspected highway robbers arrested

The Ashanti Regional Police Command in the early hours of Thursday, May 14, arrested six suspected highway robbers who went on an alleged robbery spree at Bomfa near Mamponteng in the Kwabre –East District.

The gang, made up of a Ghanaian, five Fulanis and a 15-year boy, appeared before the Juaben Circuit Court which remanded them.

Their pleas were not taken, and they will come back on May 28.

Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Kwaku Osei Ampofo Duku, Second-In-Command of the Regional Police Command, at a press briefing on Monday gave their names as Issah Sulley,15, Bela Morro, 23, Abukakar Adams, 41, Dauda Abdulai, 25, Morro Mohammed, 38 and Abdul Rashid,35.

He said on May 14, at about 0200hours, the armed group, began the robbery attack by seizing an Isuzu Pick-Up, manned by a driver and one passenger.

After robbing the occupants of their cellular phones, GH¢90 and other valuables, they then locked occupants inside and used the pick-up to block the Fawoade, Adwumakasekese and Bomfa stretch of road.

For more than an hour, they held occupants of on-coming vehicles hostage, and in a row, robbed them of cash and other valuables.

Some of the people who fell prey to the criminals were traders on board an urvan (TD) whose cash and mobile phones were taken away.

A taxi driver who had one passenger on board saw the danger ahead and attempted to make a detour, but the criminals outsmarted him as they shot into his taxi cab and stole cash and other valuables.

The gang, however, ran out of luck when one of the victims, escaped unnoticed and walked through the bush to the nearest town Bomfa, where with the help of a town folk, a report was made to the Mamponteng Police.

A police deployment was immediately dispatched to the crime scene, but they arrived too late to arrest the miscreants.

However, eight of the suspects were arrested the next day, and the six were identified by the victims.