Police in the Ashanti Region have intensified their search for the assailants who allegedly shot two people dead at Mmrom, near Ashanti New Town in Kumasi last Wednesday.
The unknown assailants succeeded in killing the two – Victor Okrah and Kwadwo Asamoah, popularly known as Gawusu.
According to the Ashanti Regional Police Public Relations Officer, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Mohammed Yusif Tanko, the assailants were architects of mayhem who must be brought to book.
He, however, called on the general public to assist the police in arresting the miscreants.
The police, he said, were also investigating whether the incident had anything to do with a similar attack on one Mafius, believed to be an agent of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), during a house-to-house campaign at Ashanti New Town by the Member of Parliament (MP) for Manhyia South, Dr Mathew Opoku Prempeh, in the run-up to the December 2012 elections.
At around 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, a group of young men attacked both Okrah and Asamoah and inflicted machete wounds on them before shooting them.
While one of them was said to have died at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), the other died on the way to the hospital and their mutilated bodies were deposited at the morgue of KATH pending autopsy.
Asamoah was believed to be one of the assistants to Dr Opoku Prempeh, who was said to have led the attack on Mafius.
Since then, Mafius’s legs have been amputated and the recent attack on the two is believed to be a revenge.
Meanwhile, in a story published on www.citifmonline.com, the MP, who was speaking on an Accra-based Citi FM’s Breakfast Show on Thursday morning, denied allegations that one of the deceased, Kwadwo Asamoah, was his bodyguard. He also said the incident was not a political assassination.
“It is an allegation that has been peddled by the regional police command (Kumasi) for some time that they have not been able to substantiate. I don’t know him personally and he is not my bodyguard,” the MP was quoted as saying.
According to him, there was no relationship between the shooting and the door-to-door campaign he did during the run-up to the December, 2012 elections.
“The shooting that occurred before the 2012 presidential and parliamentary election alleges that I was involved. I went to the police station and gave a report and other bystanders also gave a report to the police that I, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, was nowhere near where the incident happened, yet the police decided that that was the best way to give it prominence and see how effective they (the police) are trying to be.”
He further said the police administration had failed to address all the incidents of shooting in Kumasi, adding that “may be Kumasi has become too large for the police to look after.”
Story: Joseph Kyei-Boateng, Kumasi