Police probe two suspected suicide cases

Page 3: Daily Graphic, January 12, 2010.
Story: Albert K. Salia
THE police are investigating two suspected suicide cases which have rocked Odorkor and Chantan, both communities in Accra, involving a 42-year-old transport owner and a 32-year-old first-year student of the Pentecost University College, respectively.
The first of the suicide cases occurred last Friday when the transport owner, Isaac Kwarteng, allegedly used a sponge to hang himself on a ceiling fan in his bedroom at Odorkor.
Then this morning, jealousy was said to have driven Samuel Akpah of the Pentecost University College to hang himself with a necktie on a nim tree at Chantan.
The immediate cause of Kwarteng’s case is yet to be established.
Bernice Amedeke, 26, a fiancé of Sammy’s, screamed and wailed at the Mile Seven Police Station and asked that she be allowed to join Sammy, wherever he might be.
She said Sammy left the house about 4:30 a.m. yesterday with a necktie in hand.
According to her, when she asked him where he was going, since he had never left the house at that time of the day before, the deceased ignored her.
Ms Amedeke said just when she was about following him to seek an answer to her question, she got a call and stayed back to listen to it.
She said she followed up to the possible places Sammy could have gone to, since he was unemployed.
She said she returned to the house only to hear on radio that someone had committed suicide at a park near Alhaji, a suburb of Chantan.
Ms Amedeke said she quickly took a taxi to the place, only to find the deceased hanging on a nim tree.
As to whether there had been any misunderstanding between them, she said Sammy had suspected her of having an affair but she denied it.
She said the situation got worse when she returned home with a flower with Italian written on it.
She said when she said she was taking it to a priest to explain what it meant, Sammy raised an alarm that the flower confirmed that she was having an affair.
According to her, she was a Catholic and it was the Catholic Church that supported her training as a caterer and decorator and, therefore, the only place and the people she knew were the Catholic Church and its members.
Ms Amedeke said when she explained to Sammy that the only place she went was the church, he still did not believe her.
She said after a number of heated arguments, she decided to park out of Sammy’s house last Saturday, but the matter was resolved by the deceased’s aunt.
She said to the best of her knowledge, there was no problem between them.
The Mile Seven Police Commander, DSP Alice Gyamfi, confirmed the story and said the body of the deceased had been taken to the Police Hospital mortuary for autopsy.
On the Odorkor incident, the District Police Commander, Superintendent Kwaku Asare, said the police received the report about 9 p.m. last Friday, after the deceased’s wife, Ms Adwoa Yeboah, had raised an alarm when she returned from market.
He said Kwarteng allegedly used a sponge to hang himself on the ceiling fan in the bedroom, adding that the body had been taken to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital mortuary for autopsy pending further investigations.