Dead Kids’ Parents Go Wild

The families of two of the four children who died through suffocation in an abandoned car at a mechanic’s workshop at Okponglo near Legon yesterday attacked DAILY GUIDEfor publishing the story.

The parents of the late Ernestina Anang and Josephine Martey were hostile to DAILY GUIDE because the paper published the story.

The parents of Samira and Salifu Ibrahim pleaded with the media to urge the authorities concerned to hand over the remains of their kids to them for burial in accordance with Islamic tradition.

Sowatey Anang, father of Ernestina, criticised DAILY GUIDE.

The deceased, Samira Ibrahim, 7, Salifu Ibrahim, two-and-a-half, Ernestina Anang and Josephine Martey, both 4, were suspected to have died of suffocation when they were trapped in an abandoned Citroen XM saloon car registered as GW 9146 Q, parked at a mechanic’s shop at Okponglo in Accra.

The parents were yet to explain why the kids had gone playing at a time when they were supposed to be in school.Their families were however agitating for the immediate release of the remains for burial saying they were not interested in any inquests.

When DAILY GUIDE arrived at the scene around 11:20am, pockets of people had grouped discussing the incident.

A 28-year-old eyewitness, Kwaku Simon, narrated that he had taken his taxi cab to the mechanic’s shop for repairs around 2:35pm when he heard the screams of people who were looking for a taxi. He rushed to the scene and saw that four children were unconscious in the abandoned vehicle.“I helped to transport them to the hospital where they were declared dead. It was a very gory spectacle,” he said.

Another taxi driver, Kwao Borstie, 34, said he had parked his Toyota Corolla taxi numbered GR 8196-11 by the abandoned car for over three days.

On that fateful day, he came around and washed his car around 2pm but did not know about the kids in the abandoned car, adding that as a resident of the area, he had often seen kids playing around the place.

The grandfather of Samira and Salifu Ibrahim, Awal Abubakar and a cousin, Mohamed Suraji, said the death of the two kids was a great loss to the family but they were consoled that it was Allah “that gives and it is he who takes.”

They were therefore not interested in any post mortem or any legal tussle, all they wanted was the release of the remains of their children for burial.

Asked why they did not want an inquest to be carried out on the children, he said Islam demanded that persons be buried immediately after death.

But the Legon Police insisted on having an inquest undertaken to establish the cause of death.

Anang said “your story made us look stupid creating an opportunity for people to insult us as being irresponsible.”

He added that nurses at the Legon Hospital also accused them of being negligent.

He charged: “If I had been there when those nurses made that comment, I would have taught them something. We would all be hauled to the court by now,” he said.