Two alleged murder incidents rocked the Effia-Kwesimintsim municipality last Thursday and Friday, putting many residents in a state of shock.
In the first incident, a 27-year-old taxi driver at Kwesimintsim Zongo, in a fit of rage, butchered his 70-year-old mother for failing to find a beautiful woman for him to marry.
The man, identified as Samuel Mawuli, also stabbed his elder sister, who was rushed to the Effia-Nkwanta Hospital in critical condition. In the second incident, a fight between two butchers at the Whindo Slaughterhouse led to the death of one of them.
Time of the murders
A police source at the Kwesimintsim District Police Command, which confirmed the incidents in an interview with the Daily Graphic, said the taxi driver lived in a one-room apartment with his mother, Precious Akolatse, and his elder sister, Karen Ameku, 35.
It said about 9 a.m. on Friday, the suspect, who is the last of his mother’s four children, angrily confronted his mother and his sister over their failure to find for him a beautiful woman to marry to enable him to settle down in life and start a family.
Kitchen knife
The situation, the source said, degenerated into a heated argument, in the course of which Mawuli attacked his sister with a kitchen knife.
It said Mawuli inflicted deep wounds on the back of his sister, rendering her helpless.
An attempt by his mother to stop him in his tracks incurred his anger, it said, as a result of which he stabbed her at the back with the kitchen knife.
The source said the bleeding mother rushed out of the room, fell and died shortly.
Some men who had been attracted to the scene, it said, overpowered the suspect until the police arrived to whisk him to the police station.
It said the police had been to the crime scene at Kwesimintsim Zongo and also visited Ameku, who is in a critical condition at the Effia-Nkwanta Hospital and was thus unable to make a statement.
Butchers
In the second incident, the police said about 11.45 p.m. last Thursday, a fight between two butchers resulted in the stabbing of one to death.
They said Bukari Ayamdo stabbed Abuwu Ayibasiya with a butcher’s knife in the midsection.
In the course of the fight, Bukari too sustained some injuries.
Both of them were rushed to the Effia-Nkwanta Regional Hospital but Ayibasiya was pronounced dead on arrival.
The police said the bodies of the two murder victims had been deposited at the Effia-Nkwanta Hospital mortuary, while Mawuli and Bukari were in police custody.