Man kills wife, child and hangs himself

Residents of kpatalija kope, a farming community in the Dwarf Island of Kwahu Afram Plains North District in the Eastern Region, woke up to their rudest shock , when a 28-year old fisherman butchered his wife with machete ,strangled his seven- month- old daughter to death and finally hanged himself on a nearby tree, Public Agenda can report.

So far it has remained unclear the circumstances that triggered such a gruesome and barbaric act.

The man, Adinortey Joshua, was said to have asked his wife, Evijeh Kubi on the 20th January this year to accompany him to the farm as early as 5am to fetch firewood. Evijeh obliged and accompanied Joshua to the farm with their seven-month- old daughter, Doyo.

As at 8 pm when all farmers were expected to be back home, the couple was nowhere to be found. Sensing danger, the parents of Joshua reported the matter to the Headman of kpatalija- kope.

The following day, the Headman quickly organised a search party. They mounted a search as far as about 30 km from the village until they found the dead body of Evijeh with a deep cutlass wound at the back of her neck and the corpse of her baby at her back.

In his Narrative to Public Agenda, the elder brother of Evijah, Mr Kubi Esenu Emmanuel, said after seeing the bodies of the mother and the baby, the search party went further into the bush and at a distance of about 200m from where the corpses were lying, they found the dead body of Adinortey Joshua hanging on a tree about nine feet tall.

Mr Emmanuel said the bodies were subsequently conveyed to the Battor Roman Catholic Mortuary in the Volta Region.

According to him, on January 24, the Donkorkrom Police arrived at kpatalija-kope and when the crime officer was taken to the crime scene, he asked the accompanying team to conduct a search for the cutlasses that the couple sent to the farm.

“After about 30 minutes into the search, the Police got the cutlasses under a young growing tree which was 9 metres away from where the blood of Evijeh Kubi was found, one of the cutlasses was smeared with dried blood stains,” he disclosed.

Emmanuel said the mother of Joshua Adinotey told to him that her son was not well but as to exact nature of the illness , she could not tell.

When Public Agenda contacted the Donkorkrom Police, they confirmed the story. “Yes, it has happened and the bodies are now at Battor Hospital pending autopsy. We can only issue a full report when the postmortem is completed,” a police personnel told this reporter.

“The bodies were dumped at Battor, the investigator was there for the postmortem but the families who should have been there to identify the bodies didn't come, so another date has been fixed for the postmortem. We haven't actually unraveled the exact thing that caused the murder and the committing of suicide by the husband,” the police expatiated.

Public Agenda will be following further developments and bring readers up to speed in due course.