The button of a school shirt, kept in a schoolbag, was all that gave away an armed robber, John Baka, during an identification parade at the Kokrobite Police Station in Accra.
The button, which was identified in the schoolbag by the complainant, Mr Joseph Odame, and his wife, exposed Baka, who was among a gang of criminals paraded at the Kokrobite Police Station during an identification exercise.
Baka and two other accomplices, who are now on the run, reportedly stormed the Awutu Bawjiase home of the Odame family who were about to retire to bed.
The robbers tied them up with pieces of cloth, brutalised and robbed them of their valuables, including the family’s Toyota saloon car.
Baka’s plea to the charges of conspiracy and robbery was not taken, and the Agona Swedru Circuit Court, presided over by Mr Nat K.E. Osam, remanded him in custody, pending further investigations and directives from the Attorney General’s Department in Cape Coast.
The facts, according to Inspector S. Opoku-Mensah, the prosecutor, were that at about 8:40p.m. on July 22, 2013, Mr Odame, the Awutu Senya West District Officer of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, was about to go to bed with his wife and two children when three men broke into their self-contained house.
According to the prosecutor, the three robbers who were armed to the teeth, ransacked the house.
Inspector Opoku-Mensah said the robbers tied up their victims, including the children, assaulted them and made away with GH¢5,000, a laptop, three mobile phones, a box containing jewelery, two wedding rings and two pairs of jeans trousers among other belongings and loaded them into the Toyota saloon car which had been parked in front of the house.
A few weeks later, the prosecutor disclosed. when the victims got wind of an impending identification parade at the Kokrobite Police Station on August 6, 2013, they went there, only to identify Baka, who had been arrested in connection with another robbery.
Inspector Opoku-Mensah said when the police conducted a search in Baka’s room at Kasoa in the presence of the couple, they identified some of their stolen items, including the schoolbag.
