The Minister for the Interior, Ambrose Dery, has denied allegations that the police were responsible for the fatal shooting of one person during a chieftaincy clash in Sampa.
He told parliament on Tuesday, December 5, 2023, that some aggrieved young men fired the shot when they tried to stop the installation of a new Paramount Chief of Sampa.
Gunshots were fired leading to the death of one person while several others sustained injuries.
The police subsequently arrested 11 suspects and retrieved three weapons.
“The person who died was shot by the youth and not the police,” Mr Dery said.
He said the police engaged about 150 angry youths for about 2 hours to disperse them.
He narrated that after two hours of unsuccessful engagement, the youth retreated and started firing.
Alarmed by the action of the youth, he said the police were commanded to fire warning shots “only into the air”.
“So the impact of the warning shots was what dispersed the group ultimately but it left a number of people injured. The man who has been killed will have a bullet in him. There will be an autopsy and we’ll know which bullet is in him,” Mr Dery stated.
Meanwhile, he said the conduct of the police would be subjected to professional standards to ascertain if all operatives who were in this operation did the right thing.
This followed claims by the Member of Parliament for the area, Frederick Yaw Amankwah, that the person died in the exchange of fire between the police and the youth.
The MP said when the deceased was gunned down, the police stopped good Samaritans” from attending to him “until he died in the scorching sun.”
He, therefore, wants Parliament to form a bipartisan independent parliamentary committee to investigate the clash.