Crime & Punishment of Saturday, 2 July 2016

Source: Nhyira FM

Police rule out armed robbery in bakery attack

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Police in Kumasi have ruled out armed robbery in a gun attack on workers of a bakery that left two people critically injured and another sustaining gunshot wounds at Bomso.

Preliminary police investigations reveal the gangsters went to the bakery purposely to kill workers in that attack on Thursday night.

The shooting incident featured prominently at an emergency senior police officers meeting organized under the auspices of the Regional Police Commander, COP Nathan Kofi Boakye.

The meeting was to discuss, review and to plan security in the region, a day after President John Mahama ended his 3-day Accounting to the People tour in the Ashanti Region.

The armed gang had returned to the shop to retaliate an attack on one of its members who had verbal confrontation with a worker of the shop. They chased the defenseless workers in darkness and shot two workers and a customer at close range.

Though no arrest has been made so far, police say the attackers acted mainly to murder the workers for reasons yet to be established by the team of investigators.

Superintendent Rev Dr Nana Samuel Nyamekye Adane-Ameyaw, the acting Manhyia Divisional Commander completely rules out arm robbery.

“I’m ruling it out because my suspicion is that it was an attempted murder. If it was robbery, even they chased the victims out of the bakery and shot them outside. If that was robbery, then I don’t think they would have chased them outside because those items; money, other property that could have been stolen or robbed-off from them wouldn’t be outside there," Supt. Rev. Dr. Nana Adane-Ameyaw emphasized.

Supt. Adane-Ameyaw says one of the immediate task of police investigators is to retrieve weapons being paraded by members of the gang.

“We’ve started investigations earnestly to get the perpetrators and retrieve the weapons from them and if possible, prosecute them.”