A Cape Coast court has fined the Ghana Police Service ¢320,000 for negligence by its officers in connection with the shooting of three people in a cab.
The officers, who were pursuing goat thieves from Twifo Praso, fired at the thieves' car. A stray bullet hit a moving cab carrying a couple and their daughter.
The bullet struck and killed Josephine Owusuaa Aboagye, injuring her husband Aboagye Okyere and a student on her way to school.
According to the complainants, they were aboard a cab from Ankaful Junction in Cape Coast on January 10, 2019, at about 6:30 a.m., when police officers shot at them for allegedly chasing robbers from Twifo Praso.
The bullet fired by the police strayed and hit Mary Aboagye who later died in hospital, her husband and one Cecilia Mensah who was on her way to school.
Some bystanders rescued the victims and took them to Cape Coast Teaching Hospital, where Mary Aboagye was pronounced dead. The other two victims, Cecilia Mensah and her father, suffered varying degrees of injuries from the bullets.
The defendants, the Ghana Police Service, told the court that they had deployed five police officers from different police stations in the Central Region to patrol Darmang near Twifo Praso. During their patrol, they received information about a BMW sedan with four occupants suspected of driving recklessly.
A few minutes later, the said BMW approached the patrol team. The team asked the driver to stop. However, he ignored the signals and sped off, almost running over the police officers.
The team noticed that the front seat passenger was holding a AK 47 rifle. They then notified all police roadblocks from Twifo Praso to Cape Coast and took up pursuit of the said BMW.
On the outskirts of Jukwa Senior High School, the suspected robbers then started shooting at the police vehicle with the AK 47 rifle, leaving the police with no choice but to return fire.
During the search of the car, six live goats, one live sheep and five dead goats were found. The police arrested the suspected robbers and sent them with the animals found in the car to the regional headquarters in Cape Coast, where they presented a situation report to their officers.
Judge Kwasi Boakye stated that the verdict was not meant to intimidate and lower the morale of crime fighting institutions such as the police.
He urged the Inspector General of the Ghana Police Service (IGP) to take proactive steps to 'de-risk' the service.
He pointed out that there is an urgent need to completely overhaul the service in terms of its professional training and competence. He referred to a similar incident in which some armed policemen shot at an unregistered sedan in broad daylight in Tamale, resulting in the death of one [1] of the occupants, while the others sustained varying degrees of injuries.
Consequently, he awarded the 1st Plaintiff the sum of One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Ghanaian Cedis (GHC150,000.00) as liquidated damages and ordered the Defendants to pay the same taking into consideration the following: future loss of earnings, caregivers, loss of amenities, loss of life expectancy and disability.
For Cecilia Mensah, the 3rd plaintiff, a student of the Academy of Christ The King SHS, the judge quantified the compensation payable at ¢60,000 and ordered the defendants to pay it.
He also awarded the estate of the deceased a lump sum payment of ¢100,000 as her family member Josephine Okyere had sued as a dependent of Mary Aboagye.
The court fixed costs at ¢10,000 in favour of the plaintiffs and against the defendants.