<<Print>>

The Mile 7 District Police in Accra have identified the owner of two coffins left by the roadside between the Achimota branches of Access Bank and the Agricultural Development Bank early Thursday morning. Kwadwo Apau, driver in charge of a Kia truck with registration number GE 883-10, who claimed ownership of the coffins, told the Mile 7 police that he offloaded the two coffins by the roadside to enable him to deliver some food items to market women in the area. �I believed that the market women would not be happy to see their edibles packed together with the coffins so I decided to offload them by the road before going to the market to offload the food stuffs,� Mr Apau told the police in a statement. Residents of Achimota and Alogboshie were thrown into a state of panic when they woke up to see the two big coffins on Thursday morning. Some residents, including workers of the two banks, who trooped to the scene to witness the unfolding drama, suspected the owner deliberately left the coffins�wrapped with a brown paper�for spiritual purposes. Some residents had earlier told the media that they suspected that someone might have ordered the coffins for the purposes known in local parlance as �sakawa�. James Agbozo, Assemblyman for Abofun Electoral Area, had told newsmen that the owners of the brand new coffins, with their wrappers intact, had not been found. Agbozo said he received a call from the branch manager of Access Bank to �come immediately� because there was a problem. �When I got there I saw big coffins�two brand new, with their wrappers intact. I immediately called Mile 7 police who came immediately. They opened them but they were empty. �They are big, heavy coffins, like the ones used to bury chiefs. They are white and brown,� he said. However, ASP Efia Tengey, the Accra Regional Public Relations Officer, told DAILY GUIDE on Friday that Mr Apau was a driver in charge of the cargo truck that shuttles between Kumasi and Accra. According to Mr Apau, he was asked to deliver food items to some market women at Mile 7 and the two coffins to another client at Tema that Thursday morning. The police spokesperson said the driver had claimed that sensing that the market women might get frightened when they see their stuffs packed together with the coffins, he decided to offload them by the road side to enable him to deliver the food items to the women in the market. After delivering the food items, the police said Mr Apau claimed he drove back to the area where he offloaded the coffins but could not find them. Mr Apau in his statement, according to the police, said some residents later told him the police had conveyed them to the Mile 7 District Police Station and so he followed up. ASP Tengey said Mr Apau showed up at the station with receipts covering the coffins to claim ownership of the items hours later. �He also gave the telephone number of the owner of the coffins who he was to deliver them to at Tema; and so he also was contacted before the coffins were released,� she added. He was subsequently not charged.