FARMER BUTCHERED (GRAPHIC NSEMPA, MAY 10, 2010, PAGE 3)

By Collins Agyekum-Gyasi & Joseph Kyei-Boateng, Obuasi.

A SETTLER farmer has butchered another fifty-six-year-old settler farmer at Ankaase, near Ampunyase in the Adansi South District of the Ashanti Region, to death over a piece of “kako” (salted meat).
The deceased, Borna, is alleged to have been butchered by Ebenezer, 19 years, some minutes after both of them had eaten a meal at the latter’s cottage in the evening of Thursday, April 15, 2010.
Graphic Nsempa sources indicate that both Ebenezer and the deceased lived in different cottages, about 20 metres apart and were neighbours who worked on the farms of different people at Ankaase.
According to the sources, the deceased bought a piece of ‘kako’ meat and hid it in his kitchen to be used later and left the cottage to visit another friend.
On his return, he passed through Ebenezer’s cottage and was invited to eat.
In the course of the meal, the deceased smelled kako in the soup but kept quiet and continued eating with his friend. He later left for his cottage in search of the salted meat he left there.
The sources alleged that after a futile search, the deceased returned to his friend to query him over the missing kako but Ebenezer did not take kindly to the question and got infuriated over the issue.
Being the older of the two, he however, left Borna and complained to the local Unit Committee.
Aware of his quick temper, the committee reported the case to the police at Ampunyase.
At the police station, both parties were allegedly ordered to return the following day, Friday, April 15, after statements had been taken from them.
On arrival at their cottages, Ebenezer, still burning with indignation, went to his cottage, picked a sharpened cutlass and attacked the deceased, inflicting several wounds on his body.
This paper learnt that when Ebenezer realised that Borna was dead, he chopped off the head, dumped the body into an abandoned galamsey pit behind the deceased’s kitchen and left for his cottage.
The following morning, the suspect allegedly crossed the Offin River to Dunkwa to source for some money from an old girl friend to bolt from the area but as fate had it, the sad news went round, the people organised themselves into a search party and went to the Dunkwa-On-Offin township to search for him.
When he was spotted by the group, they called the Dunkwa Railway Police who arrested the suspect and later handed him over to the Obuasi Central Police.
The body of the deceased has been deposited at the morgue of the Dunkwa Government Hospital awaiting autopsy.
Meanwhile the Obuasi Police has also picked the owner of the farm on which Ebenezer worked.
He is alleged to have lied to the police when they went in search of the accused. He was alleged to have told the police when they asked of the whereabouts of the suspect that, he had sent him to Tema on an errand.