Step mum who left 5-year-old boy’s arm to rot arrested together with husband

Police in the Central Region have arrested the father and stepmother of the five-year-old boy whose arm was left to decompose after a cutlass wound inflicted on him by the stepmother was left untreated.

The 36-year-old palm wine tapper, David Mensah, was arrested late Tuesday afternoon at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital where he signed a consent form for the left arm of the victim to be amputated.

The boy’s stepmother, an apparent remorseful 22-year-old pregnant Efua Baidoowa who is already nursing another baby, was also arrested after visiting the victim, Isaac Mensah, at the hospital Tuesday.

Her statement has since been taken by the Police.

Police say they will put the two suspects before court on Wednesday morning, with a possible charge of causing harm against the stepmother.

3news on Tuesday broke the story of how 22-year-old woman was said to have accidentally inflicted cutlass wound on the left arm of the stepson about a month ago at Ahomfie, a village near Abura Dunkawa and left it untreated.

A week after, the wound started to deteriorate and gradually got out of hand resulting in the decomposition of the arm.

Currently, the left forearm of the boy has been rendered nonfictional as doctors say the veins and cells in it have all died, while the decomposition is gradually spreading to the shoulder region.

According to the doctors, they will have to amputate the arm before it causes further damage little boy.



‘I didn’t intend to harm him’

The stepmother told our correspondent Thomas Cann at the hospital that Tuesday that she did not intend to cause injury to the stepson and that what happened was accidental.

She said Isaac Mensah defecated on their compound so she decided to punish him when they went to the farm.

“I was then holding a cutlass so I decided to use the side of it to hit him, but he raised his arm to block it and unfortunately the cutlass cut him. We took him to a clinic and he was given injection and medication,” she said.

According to the woman, the man at the clinic who attended to the boy asked they bring him for review every three days for dressing of the wound. She claimed the said man also told her to use warm water to clean the wounds at home.

“When I tried to do it, he poured the water away. I decided to boil water again and I poured some on the wound. I later realized it was swollen but I continued to take him to the man who kept dressing it” she claimed.

Asked what caused the wound to deteriorate, she admitted the hot water she poured on the wound caused it to worsen.

Two men spotted the boy in town at Ahomfi on Monday, January 28 and became alarmed by rotten hand.

Shocked by the boy’s story, the two immediately reported the matter to the District Director of NCCE, Mrs. Ellen Osei who also reported same to the police before taking him to the hospital the same day for medical examination.