Suicide At Ridge

Posted: Daily Guide |Saturday, 24 July 2010

By Charles Takyi-Boadu
Barely 48 hours after a nine-year-old boy was reported to have hanged himself at Bekwai in the Ashanti Region, a man in his late 30s, has also committed suicide in another bizarre circumstance.

This time around, the body was discovered by some workers who were working at a fill-in project site in one of the colonial buildings at North Ridge in Accra, around 4.00pm on Thursday and they reported it to the Nima police.

At the time the police got to the scene, the body of the victim, which was hanging loosely on a shredded polo shirt tied to an iron rod in the uncompleted building, had started decomposing, with the deceased person’s tongue sticking out of his mouth.

The victim, who spotted a pair of tight black jeans, had clenched his fists.

Residents of the area who had gathered there could hardly stand the terrible stench emanating from the decomposing body.
The police, led by Chief Inspector A.B. Appau, head of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Nima District Police, did not find it easy cutting the rope on which the body was hanging since they could equally not stand the stench, considering the fact that they were working with no protective gear.

They however managed to cut the rope and conveyed the body to the mortuary.

This virtually summed up the strain and hazards that the country’s ill-equipped police personnel have to go through each passing day in the line of duty.

What seemed to have baffled the minds of all around and even the police team was the sighting of two pairs of slippers at the scene of the incident.

It raised questions as to what those two pairs of slippers were for, since the victim could possibly be the owner of one of them.
It was therefore not clear what a man who was going to commit suicide would be doing with two pairs of slippers.

This remains a puzzle yet to be unraveled by the police in their investigations.

The workers at the site, including one Stephen AcheampongArhin, Manager of Sasco Properties, which is developing the site, have denied knowing the victim.

They believe he may have scaled the wall to commit suicide- that is if he indeed hanged himself- since the place is not only gated but also locked, with people living there.

In the other incident, Gideon Owusu, a nine-year-old pupil had taken the Amoamo community in the Bekwai Municipality of the Ashanti region by surprise and hit his mother like a punch with a suicide at a nearby bush.

The class-two pupil of Amoamo R/C Primary School, on the afternoon of last Thursday, allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself with a small piece of cloth after the school’s break time.

The police are investigating the two incidents.