General News of Saturday, 21 March 2020

Source: starrfm.com.gh

Soldiers in Gomoa robbery case handed over to Military police

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The four soldiers who were arrested by the Police following a series of alleged robbery attacks on quarries in Gomoa Ojobi in the Central Region have been handed over to the military.

The four, WO 1 Odei Nyarko Isaac, WO 1 George Boamah, Staff Sergeant Ennin Michael and Staff Sergeant Aburam Abraham together with four plain-cloth men stormed quarry sites in the area and made away with large sums of cash, laptops, computer processing Units, printers and reportedly destroyed CCTV cameras to prevent a trace of their actions.

Officers in charge of the case at the Kasoa Millennium City Divisional Police say they were instructed to handover the case to the Police Headquarters while the military police has taken custody of the soldiers.

The suspected civilians are Ransford Awuni, Cornelius Akorasse, Nelson Akwesi Rayan, Ben Ajah alias Cliff Buckman, David Amuzu and Ebenezer Annan Quao.

Background

The alleged robberies occurred at five different stone quarries, namely Executive Stone Quarry at Gomoa Ojobi, Haoxin Stone Quarry at Awutu Ofaakor, Pilot Stone Quarry at Gomoa Ojobi, F/G Stone Quarry at Awutu Bosom-Abena and others.

Vehicles used in the operations were a white Toyota Land Cruiser with registration number BA-1696-13, Black Pajaro car (No: BA 2504-14) and a Black Toyota Land Cruiser V8 (No: AS 3366-18).

The Central Regional Police Public Relations Officer, DSP/Ms. Irene Oppong, confirmed the incident and said it occurred on March 18, 2020.

She said the manager of the Executive Stone Quarry reported to the Ojobi District Police Command that four military men armed with guns in the accompany of five civilians on board two Toyota Land Cruisers and a Pajaro came to their quarry site and robbed them of a cash of GH¢ 10,000, (1) IBM laptop computer, (1) HP Laptop computer, System units, (1) Money counting machine, (1) receipt printer and (2) security camera decoders, all valued at about GH¢20,000.

DSP Oppong said a team of police personnel from Millennium City Divisional Police Command and a team from the Kasoa Divisional Police Command pursued them until eventually catching up with them at Awutu Ofaakor near Kasoa where they were arrested.

The management of the affected quarries are writing their statements at the Millennium Divisional Police Command.

An amount of GH¢27,810 was retrieved from the suspects after they had been searched.

A fortnight ago, one of the quarries was robbed and their engineers killed and a worker injured.

The Customer Relations Officer for one of the companies, HaoXin Stone Quarry at Awutu Ofaakor, Frederick Denyo, said the company lost GH¢55,000 to the robbers.