Electrician charged with manslaughter

A 22-year-old electrician, who allegedly killed his family member, one Nana Ewu, 45, during a misunderstanding over the ownership of a family house, was on Monday remanded into police custody by a Cape Coast Magistrate Court.

The court did not take the plea of the accused, Rashid Shaibu, who had been charged with manslaughter and would reappear in court on Tuesday, June 20.

The prosecutor, Chief Inspector Christiana Sarpong, told the court, presided over by Ms Rita Amoaniwaa Edusah that the accused, together with his mother, Margaret Eyiah, deceased Nana Ewu and Kwaku Mintah, are family members living in the same vicinity in the Cape Coast metropolis.

The parties had been litigating over the title to the ownership of a family house situated at the Cape Coast Commercial Street, and this had resulted in series of quarrels among them.

According to her, on Tuesday, August 9, 2016, at about 1530hrs Nana Ewu and Mintah, who are brothers visited their sister in the said family house where Eyiah was preparing food for sale and they engaged in their usual quarrels which degenerated into a serious fight.

In the process, Eyiah called her son Shaibu, who picked a kitchen knife and inflicted multiple stab wounds on the victim’s head while the mother used smouldering firewood to hit him in the head and also bit Mr Mintah in the chest during the fight.

Sensing danger, Nana Ewu took a pestle to defend himself, but it was snatched from him by Rashid, who hit him severally with the pestle on the head and other parts of his body.

Eyiah and her son later took the deceased to the police station and accused him of hitting Shaibu on the head, but the deceased fell unconscious and was rushed to the hospital by the police together with Eyiah.

He was pronounced dead on arrival.

The mother and son were subsequently arrested and arraigned before court and were remanded into prison custody pending advice from the Attorney General’s Office, but they managed to secure bail at a Cape Coast High Court.

The charges of the two, which was murder, were changed based on the advice of the Attorney General’s Office, the prosecution said.

Shaibu’s charge had been replaced with manslaughter while Eyiah had been charged with causing harm pending a bill of indictment to commit them to trial at the High Court.