Robbers Grabbed

IN A SWIFT response to the bloody killing of their colleague, the police in Kumasi have smoked out about four of the robbers who allegedly shot and killed Sergeant Reuben Akakpo, 45, a cameraman attached to the Criminal Investigative Department (CID) of the Police Service in Kumasi in the Ashanti region. The security agents began investigations, searching every nook and cranny of the country, for the hoodlums to face the law, shortly after the gory murder on the Kumasi-Kumawu highway on November 23, 2010. The Ashanti Regional Police Command, headed by Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Patrick Timbilla, is withholding the names of the suspected killers because investigations into the incident are not yet complete. Three of the suspects, DAILY GUIDE gathered, have already started appearing before a circuit court in Kumasi on charges of robbery. Confirming the suspects’ arrest in an interview on Wednesday, Chief Inspector Mohammed Yusif Tanko, officer in-charge of the Public Relations Directorate of the regional police headquarters, described the suspects as robbers who were skilled in highway robbery operations. He said considering the series of highways robberies the gangsters were accused to have carried out, the regional police command was organizing an identification parade within its precinct on Friday, January 7, 2011. He noted that the parade was to afford victims of robberies in the region, particularly those who were attacked between 2008 and 2010, the opportunity to identify their attackers to enable the state to administer justice. The police, Chief Inspector Tanko said, suspected the four highway robbers could be members of the gang that struck in Bereku near Asankare in the Asante Akyem South on January 15, 2008. He said two robbers were shot and killed, with some escaping and others being arrested in that incident. According to him, police investigations also linked the suspects to some robberies on the Kumasi-Techiman highway and the recent Kumasi-Kumawu road network in which the police cameraman was gunned down in his BMW car. Forty-five year-old Sergeant Reuben Akakpo was killed when he ran his vehicle into a roadblock mounted by the robbers around 4am on the Effiduase-Kumasi road. The police officer’s BMW saloon car, on which he was travelling from Kumasi to Kumawu, suddenly stopped after it hit the block. His killers, three of whom were wearing masks, ordered him to get down from his vehicle but before he could do so, the hoodlums fired two shots into his rib. He bled profusely, leading to his death. The gunmen took his cell phone and other personal belongings.