Cocaine found on accident victim

Four staff members of the Winneba Government Hospital, including the Administrator, have been arrested in connection with the loss of a substance believed to be cocaine which was found on the body of an accident victim.

They were picked up on separate occasions on May 24 and 25 but were granted bail four days later pending further investigations, a police source told the Times yesterday.

The victim was one of the 40 people who died at Gomoa Okyereko, near Winneba in the Central Region, in an accident which occurred last month involving a Lome-bound Ivorian registered bus and some other vehicles including two articulated trucks.

The four, Anthony Obeng, the Hospital Administrator, Millicent, the Health Inspector, Frank Donkor and Gideon Nyarko, both mortuary attendants, have been reporting to the Central Regional Police Headquarters in Cape Coast every Tuesday as part of the bail conditions.

Confirming the arrests, the police source said: "Some staff members of the Winneba Hospital have been questioned in relation to the loss of the suspected substance and some amount of money found on the bodies of some of the accident victims."

The source said the substance has been retrieved and sent to the laboratory for forensic tests. The substance was allegedly found concealed in the private part of a female victim believed to be in her early 40s.

Together with other items, including cash belonging to the victims, the cocaine was supposed to have been handed over to an official of the hospital and a record of the items kept.

As to whether an entry regarding the substance was made in the record book is one of the mysteries that is yet to be unravelled, the Times has learnt.

The police have seized mobile phones belonging to the suspects to enable them to help in the investigations.

On May 11, when the accident occurred, the bodies of all 40 victims, who were Ivorian, Nigerian, Liberian and Togolese nationals, were initially taken to the Winneba Government hospital mortuary but due to space constraints, Times learnt that 31 of them were later transferred to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital.