The timely intervention of a reinforcement team of police personnel saved two of their colleagues from a mob attack at Nkurakan near Koforidua in the Eastern Region.
The angry mob nearly lynched the two security officers whom they had mistaken for armed robbers at nearby Boti and engaged them in a hot pursuit in a bid to administer instant justice to them.
The two officers said to be with the Police Intelligence Department (PID) of the Regional Police Command in Koforidua were dressed in mufti and wore earrings to disguise their identities when they embarked on a special anti-narcotics mission to nearby Boti to arrest some suspected weed dealers.
Following the arrests of the suspects, the youth of the community who reportedly mistook the officers for kidnappers and armed robbers chased after the two taxi cabs conveying the police and suspects, they managed to catch up with them and subsequently accosted them at Nkurakan.
The confrontation between the youth and the policemen began to draw a large mob to the scene and the security officers sensing danger, jumped out of the taxi and sought refuge at the Nkurakan police station.
One of the taxi cabs was subsequently set ablaze and the other vandalized by the youth.
The youth subsequently massed up at the Nkurakan police station, demanding that the two officers, whom they still insisted were armed robbers and kidnappers, be released to them to enable them administer instant justice.
A reinforcement team consisting of armed personnel drawn from the Counter Terrorism Directorate (CTD) of the Ghana Police Service from Koforidua responded to the situation and managed to whisk their colleagues to safety and restore order after firing several rounds of warning shots with the youth responding by throwing stones at the police.
Assembly man for Nkurakan Electoral Area, Thomas Afedi Amponsah detailed the
circumstances surrounding the incident to GhanaWeb in an interview.
“The information is that those that were arrested were not armed robbers but they’re (part) of a unit of the Ghana Police Service and they were carrying out an exercise and you know sometimes most of them wear earrings…so the people also thought they were armed robbers so when they chased them from Huhunya to Nkurakan, it is there that the police got to know that they’re all policemen
so they called for reinforcement from soldiers and policemen.
“They fired into the air…according to an eyewitness, those guys from Huhunya chased those men and they were trying to kill them so they managed to burn one of their cars…but the reinforcement team was able to rescue the policemen from the crowd,” narrated the Assemblyman.
The suspects are also said to be in police custody pending further investigations.
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