A court in Cape Coast has upheld the claim of innocence by Nana Nyeiku VII, over the death of a policeman at Mankessim and has, therefore, acquitted and discharged him of any wrong doing. Following the decision of the court, presided over by his worship James Botar, Nana Nyeiku also known in private life as Mr Isaac Eshun, can now walk a free man, as the ruling has cleared his name.
Background
It would be recalled that on January 21, 2020 at about 2:30 am, the Zen Fuel Filling Station, which is owned by Nana Nyeiku, alias Mr Isaac Eshun, was attacked by suspected deadly firearm wielding robbers.
An official statement issued by the Central Regional Police spokesperson, DSP Mrs Irene SerwaaOppong, in respect of the crime, indicated that a patrol team visited the Zen Fuel Station, following a distress call that armed robbers had stormed the place.
However, as the team proceeded to the station, they were unfortunately met with fierce and sporadic shooting by the armed robbers, a situation that led to two policemen sustaining life threatening gun injuries.
Meanwhile, at about 4:30 am the same day, the lifeless body of a certain young man, with a mark of gunshot on his body, was seen lying prostrate at about 800 metres away from the Zen Filling Station, where the robbery incident had occurred about two hours earlier.
The deceased was later identified as Lance Corporal (L/Cpl) Kingsley Kofi Boahen, a policeman who was stationed at Mankessim. His identification sparked series of controversies, as several accounts and rumourswere give for his untimely death.
One story that stood out was the fact that the policeman who was found dead, was not in his official duty uniform and was also not part of the police patrol team that responded to the distress call, following the robbery at the fuel station.
Some people accounted that the deceased policeman was on his usual jogging exercise that morning and might have been caught in the cross fire between the robbers and the police, whereas others suspected that he might have been a victim of circumstance.
A visit to the crime scene by the owner
Mr Isaac Eshun accounted that after the robbery incident and the ensuing gun battle between the police and the robbers, he visited the scene with the patrol team, after the police have sent the injured victims to the hospital.
“Due to the severity of the situation as reported to me by my manager, I picked my registered gun along with me, when I was going to the scene,” Nana Nyieku stated.
All this while, it was not known to him or the police team that came around that someone has been killed at about 800 metres away from the crime scene, but he was later made to suffer for a crime that he knew nothing about.
“From the hospital, we went back to the crime scene with the patrol team, who retrieved some items the robbers had left behind, including mobile phones and an angle grinder among others,” he stated.
The police, he said, took away all spent cartridges for further forensic analysis and kept the other items to be used in their investigations and also serve as an exhibit
Investigations and arrest
As parts of efforts to establish the facts of events that led to the death and injury of the deceased and the two others respectively, the police quickly commenced investigations into the matter and in the process invited the owner of the station for questioning.
“Some hours later, the police invited me and I was asked to give a statement regarding the death of their colleague, who was found dead about 800 metres away from my fuel station, where the robbery had occurred,” Mr Eshun explained.
Though every available evidence including CCTV captured videos indicated that Mr Eshun was far away, the police made him a prime suspect and set free those who were captured by the CCTV
“I willingly handed over my gun to them and added the CCTV videos that captured the coming out of my house as well as what transpired at the station to aide in their investigations and to prove my innocence, but the police were simply not ready to give me a listening ear,” he said.
He was, therefore, put on remand for about four weeks though he claimed to be innocent of the crime and made the necessary CCTV evidence and his gun available to the police for investigations and further interrogations to establish exactly what happened.
He told the media that: “At least I needed a forensic investigation into the type of gun that killed the policeman so as to aide in the investigations, but the police in the Central Region denied me.”
High court’s order and police disobedience
A high court in Cape Coast granted Mr Isaac Eshun bail, but the police allegedly disobeyed the court order and kept him in custody for fourteen days. The court order was finally obeyed after the family of Nana Nyeiku sued the police for contempt against the orders of the court.
Meanwhile, when he was in custody, his residence was thoroughly searched by about fifty-four fully armed police officers who, according to Eshun, did not have any court order or warrant.
Counsel’s reaction
Lawyer John Assan Benson, who represented Mr Eshun, told the media that his client noticed that the police in the region were simply determined to sacrifice him for a crime he never committed.
The attitude of the police, he argued, clearly attested to the fact that they were up to something mischievous, rather than the lawful obligation to investigate to know the actual killers
A petition to the Inspector General of Polic
Evidently, the behaviour of the police indicated that they were never interested in getting to the bottom of the case by doing proper investigations to fish out the actual culprits of the crime. Following this, a petition was sent to the Inspector General of Police IGP and the Director General of the Criminal Investigations Department, CID, Accra
As a result, due diligence was done and proper forensic and ballistic analysis were made by the police administration to ascertain the exact gun that killed the policeman, as well as who shot him. The aforementioned examinations, as conducted by the professionals, vindicated Mr Isaac Eshun and exonerated him of all the charges.
Court’s decision
The court, presided over by his worship James Bota, on Friday acquitted and discharged Mr Isaac Eshun after the police forensic and ballistic examinations had exonerated him and cleared his name.
The post Death of cop @ Mankesim fuel station: Court acquits & discharges Isaac Eshun appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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