How two ladies were robbed ‘rambo’ style between police checkpoints at Winneba

Picture having to suddenly meet a den of robbers who not only attack you, forcefully take your properties, fire bullets and threaten all other vehicle drivers around. As though that isn’t enough, you yield your car and resort to the bush for fear of being raped.

This is the story of two siblings, Joana Maame Besiwa and Josephine Annan-Dennis who were subjected to torture by armed robbers on the Winneba Highway on their return from Cape Coast.

Josephine, one of the two who took to Facebook to narrate their ordeal revealed the most shocking part of the incident; the fact that police personnel only arrived at the scene after the entire ‘show’ was over, despite the fact that there were check points just about five minutes away and before the scene of the robbery.

Per her narration;

“We set off from Saltpond at 7:30pm and as is usual of that highway, we crossed about 6 police barriers before getting to Winneba junction. Just about 5 minutes’ drive after crossing the 7th police barrier, all we saw was a ‘rambo-style’ action, where a gentleman jumped from nowhere and fired two warning shots and commanded every car to stop. I immediately rolled up my car windows and slowed down because the car ahead of me had stopped. A guy appeared at my front passenger side and tried to yank the door open but it was locked. He kept forcing his way to open the door, even causing the car to shake and at a point, tried to smash the window. I became alarmed and rolled down the windows. The robber first asked for our mobile phones and told me to turn off my car lights. We handed the phones over to him and he asked us to bring the money. We told him there was no money but he swung the door open and picked my sister’s handbag. I started gathering any money I could find in the car and handed it to him. He ordered us to get out of the car and lie down which we obediently obeyed. We began to beg him not to shoot us”

“When the guy had finished with our car, he moved to join his other colleagues who were operating on the other 3 cars that were heading to Accra. When they had finished with all the 4 cars, they run to operate on the cars that were heading to Cape Coast/Takoradi/Elubo, still firing some warning shots in-between. As we lay on the ground, we could hear them shouting at other drivers and passengers, while instructing them to part with their valuables. In the heat of this, we heard one robber instructing a lady to ‘remove her brassiere’. We became very frightened and it was at this point that we decided to crawl into the bush for safety since we could not tell what their next line of action was going to be”.

She also narrated how that police men who supposedly were to help them in some way rather looked unconcerned and in some cases mocked them when they managed to regain composure and move on to the police checkpoints ahead of them.

“Less than 5 minutes after driving off, we got to another police checkpoint. In a confused state, I tried to interact with the policeman about the just ended encounter with the robbers. Their responses and body language just told us that they ‘cared less’ about what happened to us. WE continued our journey and later met 4 policemen at the Budumburam checkpoint. We recounted her ordeal to them but their posture and demeanor, made me LOSE HOPE. They were so nonchalant and even laughed at us. I just wept silently and drove on. In my mind, I kept asking myself if this is the same Ghana I knew….Our third encounter with another patrol team was nothing to write home about”.

Read the full narration below: