Sagnarigu: 6-year-old boy drowns in flood

A  6-year-old  pupil of the Choggu-Yapalsi M/A primary school in the Sagnarigu Municipality in the Northern Region on Thursday afternoon met his untimely death after he was swept away by flood waters into a storm drain.

The deceased was on his way home from school after a heavy downpour when the incident occurred at about 1 pm.

The pupil whose identity was not made public to the media is said to have fell in a gutter around Choggu/Yapalsi and swept through the flood waters into a big storm drain around Gumani on the Tamale-Bolgatanga highway.

It took the intervention of passersby to retrieve the body from the deep storm drain which was filled with flood water before the arrival of the police.

The body has since been deposited at the Tamale Teaching Hospital mortuary awaiting an autopsy.

Eyewitness

An eyewitness, Adam Rashid told Graphic Online that “the boy was found dead in the storm drain after the heavy downpour, I suspect he was carried away by the floods into the gutter”.

He narrated that due to the volume of the water in the drain the passersby had a hectic time retrieving the body.

Police

When contacted the Northern Regional Crime Officer of the Ghana Police Service, Superintendent Otuo Acheampong said police received a distress a call about the incident at about 1:30pm and dispatched personnel to the scene.

He said the police was investigating the matter to ascertain the cause of the death.

Background

The heavy downpour which lasted for about 4 hours left the Tamale metropolis and the Sagnarigu Municipality flooded.

This is not the first time such terrific incident had occurred in the area.

In July 2017, a 59-year-old woman who was rushing to pick her child from school in her car was washed away by the heavy flood on her arrival at the storm drain.