Unidentified gunmen last Saturday night in Tema shot a police dispatch rider attached to the security detail of former President, Flt-Lt Jerry John Rawlings.
The outrider, Sergeant (Sgt) Atsu Sekeh, whose condition is being monitored by doctors at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Tema General Hospital (TGH) is said to belong to a family of police outriders, currently, brother and late father.
Information available to the Chronicle indicates that at about 2200hrs on Saturday, Sgt Sekeh riding a motorbike with registration number GP 4405, was returning to his home at Gbetsile, near the Michel Camp of the First Battalion of Infantry (1BN) of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF).
At Afariwa Junction on the Tema-Akosombo highway, armed police personnel of the Motor Patrols Unit mounted snap check barrier.
Less than a kilometer from the snap check point, and upon reaching the Tema Community 22 intersection, occupants of a parked blue Toyota Corolla suddenly opened fire on the police dispatch rider sending him crash on the ground.
A Good Samaritan driver moved at top speed to the Afariwa Junction to inform the armed bikers who rushed to the scene to engage the criminal elements.
Sensing the approaching special squad, the gunmen drove through Community 22 and vanished.
The severely wounded dispatch rider, also with a sidearm, got help from his colleagues who rushed him to hospital.
Doctors with the speed of lightning operated on his badly injured and swollen hand after which he was sent to the ICU of the facility.
Top security operatives this reporter spoke to are yet to come to terms with the motive behind the near assassination of the police rider.
According to them, it is not clear if he only became a victim of armed criminal elements who have developed the penchant to eliminate state security personnel or it was an act deliberately orchestrated at the executive, both past and present
About the middle of 2017, Constable Kporyi of the Tema Police Command, whilst he was riding a motorbike to work suffered death on being shot at the same spot.
His was reprisal attack when police, days before then, encountered bandits at Community 9, but one could not survive after fierce exchanges with the law enforcement officers
The leader of the group reportedly sworn to eliminate all policemen on motorbike but himself never lived longer to witness the effect of his declaration.
On the 12th of January 2018, Sgt George Boakye of the Ghana Military Police, seconded to the Jubilee House as part of the Vice President Alhaji Dr Maamoud Bawumiah’s security details was killed at Tema Community 18.
Police in September of that year apprehended a 21-year old taxi driver, Ayitey Dorseh, a member of that dastardly act.
Police have meanwhile launched investigation to arrest those behind the shooting of Sgt Atsu Sekeh. Stay tuned.
Source: The Chronicle
