'Assassins' open fire on Rawlings dispatch rider

Unidentified gunmen, last Saturday night, shot a police dispatch rider attached to the security detail of former President Jerry John Rawlings in Tema.

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), was said to belong to a family of police outriders, as his brother and late father were all into the trade.

Information available to The Chronicle indicates that at about 22:00hours on Saturday, SgtSekeh, 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 Afariwaa Junction on the Tema-Akosombo highway, armed police personnel of the Motor Patrols Unit had mounted snap check barrier.

Less than a kilometre from the snap check point, and upon reaching the Tema Community 22 intersection, the occupants of a parked blue Toyota Corolla suddenly opened fire on the police dispatch rider, sending him crashing to the ground.

A Good Samaritan driver drove at top speed to the Afariwas Junction to inform the armed police personnel, who rushed to the scene to engage the criminals.

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 quickly 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 the dispatch rider was a victim of armed criminal elements who have developed the penchant to eliminate state security personnel.

Somewhere in 2017, Constable Kporyi of the Tema Police Command, whilst riding a motorbike to work was shot at the same spot.

His was a reprisal attack when police personnel, 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 swore to eliminate all policemen on motorbikes, but he himself never lived long enough to witness the effect of his declaration.

On January 12, 2018, Sgt George Boakye of the Ghana Military Police, seconded to Jubilee House as part of Vice President AlhajiDrBawumia’s security detail, was killed at Tema Community 18.

Police, in September, the same year, apprehended a 21-year old taxi driver, AyiteyDorseh, a member of the perpetrators of that dastardly act.

The police have, meanwhile, launched investigations to arrest those behind the shooting of SgtAtsuSekeh.