A man believed to be in his mid-thirties and allegedly considered mentally ill, has hacked to death his mother aged 85, and father, 90 in Newtown, a suburb of Sunyani in the Bono Region of Ghana.
The incident which happened at around 12 am Friday dawn saw the man, name withheld, hack his unsuspecting parents in their sleep, killing them in the process.
Reports from Happy98.9FM/e.TV Ghana’s Bono Regional correspondent, Augustine Adombire indicate that the unnamed man broke out of a secure room he was locked in to embark on this killing spree.
“We heard about the case at 12 am this dawn and visited the scene at 4pm. The man is suspected to be insane and chopped up his mother, 85 years and his father, 90 years. He killed them by chopping them up with an axe. People living in the neighbourhood told us that he had been threatening to kill them for a while now but no one paid any serious attention to him and that’s sad.”
According to Augustine who had an encounter with the young man, he is not of a sound mind “and you will notice that from the way he speaks.”
Giving the update in an interview with Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show, he disclosed that a step-sister of the young man called for help when she heard the screams of her frail parents, but help did not arrive on time.
The Police later arrived at the scene and transported the bodies to the Sunyani Municipal Hospital.
Reacting to these gruesome murders, the co-host of the Happy Morning Show, Fati Shaibu-Ali considering the incident as sad also described it as a lesson to the Ghanaian community. She believes Ghanaians do not treat mental health issues with all the seriousness they should.
“Instead of taking this young man to the hospital for treatment, they locked him in a room. I cannot diagnose what he was going through but this wouldn’t have happened if they sought him immediate medical help,” she stated.
Deeply saddened by the incident she advised Ghanaians to treat mental health cases as the ultimate priority, seeking medical help for concerned parties to prevent such an incident from repeating itself.
