Police hunt for six suspected kidnappers
The police in the Savannah Region in collaboration with a local search party have intensified the search for six members of a kidnapping gang.
The gang kidnapped a four-year-old boy at Busunu in the West Gonja Municipality in the Savannah Region last Tuesday.
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The kidnappers, said to be about 10, ran into the search party in the bush at the outskirts of Busunu and engaged it in a shootout, resulting in the death of four of them and injury to a member of the search party.
However, the other six managed to flee the scene of the incident on board three motorbikes with the victim, while the bodies of the four suspected kidnappers have since been deposited at the West Gonja Municipal Hospital in Damongo.
The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Savannah Regional Police Command, Inspector Adjekum Owusu, who confirmed the incident to the Daily Graphic, said the combined search party being led by the police had intensified its search for the remaining six kidnappers who fled from the scene.
Frequency
According to the police, it was the third time in a year a case of kidnapping had been reported, and in two of the cases the victims were rescued.
Inspector Owusu said the incidence of kidnapping was on the rise in Busunu and its surrounding communities which led to the formation of the search party by the community, and it was believed that it was the same kidnapping gang operating in the area which had kidnapped the four-year-old boy who was still in their custody.
Facts
Briefing the Daily Graphic, Inspector Owusu said that last Wednesday at about 2 p.m., the chief linguist of Yagbonwuru (the Overlord of Gonja), Alhaji Afoli Losina, accompanied by Gbanfuwura, Alhaji Abudu. and the Busunu Fulani chief came to the regional crime office to report that at about 11 a.m. on the same day, one of their children aged four had been abducted the previous day.
He said a search party was organised to look for the abducted child and in the course of the search the party ran into a group of kidnappers in the bush.
Inspector Owusu said the kidnappers started shooting at the members of the search party and they also shot back, killing four of them.
He said based on the report, a police team led by the Regional Commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Mr Ebenezer Larbi, went to the crime scene in the bush, about four miles from the Busunu township, where the four bodies of male adults between the ages of 18 and 34 years were found in a pool of blood.
Inspector Owusu said the police found four BB cartridges, sandals and shoes at the scene and the items had been kept for investigation.
The bodies have been deposited at the West Gonja Municipal Hospital in Damongo for preservation and autopsy, while investigation continues.