“How Did You Get Our Number?”

An Accra housewife put up a rare female bravado when a gang of armed robbers stormed the family residence and ordered them to say their last prayers because they were going to be killed. “Say your last prayers”, the woman said her captives ordered her while she tried to delay them in raiding her Teshie/Nungua Greda Estates residence last Wednesday. Eventually though, the robbers, armed with local weapons, overpowered her and she let go her resistance behind the door which they forced open. Narrating her ordeal and that of her husband and kids at the hands of the young armed robbers Daily Guide, Madam Adiza Nii Ankrah said she was rudely woken from sleep at 2.00am by knocks on one of the doors in the estate house. The noise was immediately accompanied by the staccato of gunshots.The robbers had already tied up the security man in the house and stuffed his mouth with some pebbles to prevent him from raising alarm, she said. “It was frightening hearing the gunshots at the wee hours of 2am. I managed to call the Police Post at the estates but was surprised at their response. They asked how I got their number and eventually parried my SOS request away by telling me that there was no vehicle available for them to move to our address”. A next-door neighbor, she recalled with gratitude, hearing the gunshots phoned the Kpeshie Divisional Police Command, which responded promptly by dispatching a patrol team. But unfortunately for them the patrol team could not locate the house on time and even drove past the location as the operation went on. Continuing, she recalled how when the robbers finally made their way into the house they asked in pidgin English “where them dey?”On their request for money, she said she told them there was none in the house, a response which got them angry and they fired some more shots. She mentioned that she had meanwhile locked up her kids in another room. Her husband who had taken cover was finally spotted and beaten severely, after which he was fired at but the lead missed him and hit the ground. He had earlier told them that they could make away with his laptop but this did not appeal to them and they inflicted some cutlass wounds on him. They were perhaps convinced that he was dead and concentrated on his wife who told them that she could offer them her jewelry but that did not save her from being beaten by the hoodlums. “Say your last prayers” the woman said her captives ordered her. “But I pleaded with them to save me because after all I had parted with my jewelry,” she said. They took the jewelry away from the now frightened woman and just as the patrol team passed by the house in search for it, one of the robbers spotted the vehicle and alerted his colleagues “police” and they quickly bolted. The same group appears to have descended on a senior staffer of Unilever who lives in the same neighbourhood, and made away with valuables. He too had called the nearby Police Post and had a similar rude response “how did you get our number?” They failed to turn up and the victim parted with a number of valuables. It appears therefore that the same gang is prowling the Greda Estates at Teshie/Nungua, not far away from the local cemetery. The two victims of the robbery do not seem to have any confidence in the police post planted in their neighbourhood.