Police working hard to find missing teacher

Ho, March 27, GNA - Mr Bernard Dery, the Volta Regional Police Commander, says the police are on top of investigations into the missing basic school teacher at Woe in the Keta District.

He told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview in Ho on Tuesday that it was not advisable for individuals or groups to make statements on the matter based on sentiments, while the police "continue to approach the matter professionally, delineating facts from fiction and working on bits and pieces of clues".

Mr Dery said seven people were in custody helping in investigations while a host of others had been interrogated.

"Ours is a professional approach, no politics no chieftaincy," Mr Dery, who has taken personal charge of investigations, said. Wilson Tenu, 29, a teacher at the Salvation Army School, was said to have left home at Woe on a bicycle at about 2030 hours on September 6 last year to buy an item but failed to return and has since not been found.

The bicycle on which he rode has also not been traced. Mr Dery said the demonstration by teachers and other individuals or groups said to be concerned about the situation might only hinder investigations.

He said chiefs and opinion leaders in Woe were concerned about the matter and had been cooperating with the police.

Mr Dery said investigations had established that the teacher on that day locked a girlfriend in his room and left for town despite protestations by the girl friend that it was too late to go out. He said the door to Tenu's room was broken when after three days he had not returned and the girl friend started banging the door. Mr Dery said an associate, whom Tenu told his girlfriend he was visiting that night but who came to enquire about Tenu while his girl friend remained locked up, was among those picked up for questioning. He said also arrested was a fetish priest who was alleged to have sold a phone with a chip belonging to Tenu to a boy resident at Anloga. Mr Dery said the police were working on tips that one of the suspects had been seen with a phone similar to what Tenu was using. He said the police were following the trail of associates of the missing teacher during and after he got missing and also associates of Tenu in a supposed side business that took him to a town in the Republic of Togo often.

He said the police therefore needed time to get to the bottom of the matter.