After losing her biological father, brother and grandfather to death, another tragedy hit Irene Logan when she moved from Liberia to Ghana with her mother - armed robbers shot her stepfather.
The unfortunate incident, she recalls, occurred after her mother got married to Charles Ebo Takyi in 1996. They [Irene and her mother] had left Liberia five years back on the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) flight following an unrest in Liberia.
Having lost three relatives in a year, they finally could afford a smile because the man [Ebo Takyi] availed himself and showed them immense love.
“He was a good man. She [my mum] made the right choice. She was not only thinking of herself; she had to be with a man who will be accommodating of her daughter. He was perfect, God just sent him right on time for us,” Irene said on ‘Restoration with Stacy’.
The moment, according to her, did not last. Their happiness was truncated when armed robbers visited them one Sunday and shot her father seven times.
“Sometime between me finishing school, I worked a little bit at Citi FM. Disaster hit again at home. On Mothers’ Day, one Sunday, we were all sitting down as a family. We had gone to buy pizza for my mum and we were watching a movie. He heard the dogs bark around 12 midnight. My dad run out to see what was happening. They were armed robbers,” she recalled.
According to Irene, her father decided to protect them. His quest to do so made the robbers pull the trigger, shooting him seven times.
She said: “Because he was the only man in the house, he’s so strong and stubborn. He was not gonna allow them to come into the house because we heard stories about them raping women… He tries to stop them; they surrounded him and shot him.”
“I was the only one who saw it because I was looking through the kitchen window. They shot him seven times. They were masked. As he went down, what he kept saying to them was ‘I won’t die but each and every one of you will die’. They shot him and ran. When we opened the door, he was lying there in a pool of blood. My mum told me to help her and she said ‘God, not again.’
“They took him to 37 Military Hospital. That was another very difficult moment of our lives. He spent 6 months on his back. He had to learn to walk again, his leg broke.”
Irene, winner of Stars of the Future season 1 reality show held in 2006 said she joined the contest after the incident. She mentioned that she was determined to make a mark “in such a way that would protect my family from any outside influence.”
“I was so angry and that anger sort of gave me some type of fire to do something for myself. So when I heard the advert for Stars of the Future, it was about two years after this had happened.”
Life in Liberia
The songstress, born on February 16, 1984, in Monrovia, Liberia, said losing her grandfather, biological father and brother in a year was one of the most difficult moments for her mother who had to bear the pain of losing people she cherished.
“When I was three months old, my father died. I had an older brother who died within the same year. So within the year, my mum lost her father, her son and her husband,” she recounted.
“My parents got married really early. They were in love. My father was also very musical. He played the guitar, my mum sings. She was a big gospel musician in Liberia back in the day and the reason why we got to come to Ghana was because she used to travel across Africa, America and Europe to minister. One of the places she had come to was Action Chapel…,” she told host Stacy.
The musician said she was 7 years old when she came to Ghana and has stayed in the country since then.
