He woke up Tuesday morning, said goodbye to his family and left for work in his newly acquired KIA Price saloon car, but that was the last time his family would see him alive.
That is the story of a 49-year-old tanker driver, Samuel Asabour, who was allegedly shot and killed by a police patrol team in broad daylight on Tuesday, August 20, 2013.
On that fateful day, the late Asabour, according accounts by the family, went to see a friend at Ashaiman, but eventually left for work when he was told his friend had gone out.
At about 8:30 that morning whilst driving to Tema, a police patrol team gave him a chase, suspecting him of driving a snatched car.
In the chase, the KIA Price skidded off the road and landed in a ditch about hundred meters from the Michel Camp on the Ashaiman-Tema road.
According to an eye witness who narrowly escaped the vehicle, a red-eyed police man jumped out of a pick-up shouting ‘armed robber, armed robber,’ and despite being told by another policeman not to shoot, opened fire and shot the defenseless KIA driver who staggered out of his mangled vehicle and knelt down to beg the gun-wielding policeman to spare his life.
The eyewitness, who gave his name only as Nathan, operates a vulcanizing shop at the exact spot where the incident happened.
He told Joy News that he escaped narrowly because when the late Asabour veered off the road, he hit a roadside signboard which alerted him [Nathan] to take cover before the vehicle landed in the ditch.
A visit to the scene indicates shards of glass strewn around the vulcanizing shop.
Nathan said after Mr. Asabour was shot, the police dragged him into their pick-up and sped off. Amidst bravely-withheld tears betrayed by intermittent sobs, Mrs Asabour told Myjoyonline.com that she called her husband that morning to inform him that she was going to Madina and would return late but a strange voice picked up the call and told her that Mr. Asabour had been involved in an accident and rushed to the Tema General Hospital.
The man introduced himself as Safo Kantanka, a police officer with the Emef Police Station at Ashaiman.
She said the news made her feet wobble but she steadied herself and fetched her son and together they rushed to the Tema General Hospital but there was no-one there to give them any concrete information about the whereabouts of her husband.
Her desperate questions, she said, jolted one nurse who told them the police brought someone of the description she gave but said the person had been taken away probably to the police Hospital.
Having searched in vain at the Police Hospital, she called the said Safo Kantanka who told her to go to Port Police Station at Tema and see one Asare, who was in charge of investigating the case.
At the Port Police Station, a teary Mrs Asabour said, they were told that the investigator had closed for the day and so they should go home and return Wednesday.
At this point one policeman called Aaron Samuel Asabour and confided in him that his father had died instantly after the accident but admonished him not to tell his mother.
Refusing to believe the news, Aaron said he scowled and told the informant that that was impossible. He coddled his mother and they went home.
The next morning they scrambled to Port Police Station, where a dismissive Asare, according to Aaron, grudgingly told them to go to the Police Hospital and identify the body.
The 23-year-old Senior High School graduate said when they got to the hospital, “my father had been cut open and they said they were doing autopsy.”
Hours earlier a police officer had turned up at the Police Hospital with the body of Mr. Asabour, declared unknown.
There were instructions that the autopsy be done and the body prepared for mass burial scheduled for this week.
A source at the Police Hospital said, “when the man brought the body and said it was an accident case, I asked him, ‘are you sure’”?
The source upon seeing Mr. Asabour had clearly been shot, asked, “how can you kill someone’s father like that”?
He said there was no iota of doubt that the deceased was shot and killed.
The family says the police tried to intimidate the car dealers from whom the late Asabour bought the KIA Price which was yet to be registered.
Police sources say the version of the patrol team was that they had a tip-off that a vehicle of the nature driven by the deceased had been snatched. That was why they pursued the tanker driver who met his untimely death in their hands.
