Crime & Punishment of Sunday, 1 July 2007

Source: GNA

Insane person butchers farmer to death

Dormaa Ahenkro (B/A), June 30, GNA - A man who was suspected to be insane person sent shock waves through the residents of Asunsu Number One in Dormaa District on Sunday when he, without any provocation, butchered a farmer to death.

Yaw Amponsah, known in the area for his mental disability, was whisked to the regional hospital in Sunyani for examination while the mutilated body of the deceased, Agya Kwame, has been released to his family for burial.

Detective Sergeant C harles Agovi told the Ghana News Agency that on Sunday morning a "normal" Amponsah recruited some labourers to assist him on his farm.

While on the farm the suspect assumed a strange posture and repeatedly declared that the labourers were beasts that deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth.

The labourers escaped from the farm with some of them abandoning their cutlasses and Wellington boots on the farm. Amponsah gave them a fruitless chase so turned his wrath on Agya Kwame who was working on his farm, slashed his head off with a single stroke of a cutlass and inflicted wounds on other parts of the body. Sergeant Agovi said the suspect ran to the town shouting, "I have killed a deer. I have killed a deer".

The residents, who had been briefed by the labourers about Amponsah's behaviour on the farm, organized a search party to verify the truth but found the mutilated body of the deceased.