PHOTO: Armed Robbers Friends Go Wild

The sprawling Accra suburb of Nima, in the afternoon of yesterday, saw an influx of youth, most of whom were in a wild procession to bury one of their own, Taufic aka 16, an armed robber who was lynched at Taifa last Saturday after he fell from the motorbike on which he and his runaway accomplice rode on to attack their victims. Taufic and his accomplice were said to have robbed five people in the Taifa Burkina area of Accra and were bolting with their booty on Saturday dawn when residents raised an alarm. A tro-tro van hit the motorbike they were riding on, resulting in his fall, while his friend took to his heels and left him to his fate. He was subsequently lynched by a mob. The irate youth who rode on tens of motorbikes and in posh cars as well as mini vans, blocked the roads in the community as a way of paying their last respect to the deceased armed robber. Any attempt by passersby to get passage was thwarted by the wild-looking youth. The huge crowd that followed the procession drew onlookers to think the community had lost a very important person, only to learn later that the casket which had been carried shoulder high with a mammoth crowd around it contained the remains of one of the dare-devil robbers killed over the weekend after a robbery expedition in two separate locations. Sources close to the deceased robber hinted that the boy was from an affluent family, with his father domiciled in Belgium. Even though he had been caught several times in the act and beaten to pulp, he always received prompt medical treatment and whoever dared to call the boy a rogue was in trouble. This made the community tight-lipped over his behavior until the unexpected happened. The sources said Taufic lived in Nima where he had a robbery gang which met frequently to scheme on their expeditions. News of his death did not therefore surprise most residents of the densely-populated community. In a related issue, the remains of one of the two robbers who were gunned down by police officers from the Accra Regional Police Command, at the Airport West residential area on Saturday, Razak, have also been laid to rest, with his father reportedly rejecting the body. Sources said his cronies took it upon themselves to bury the armed robber after his father swore not to have anything to do with his remains. It would be recalled that Razak and three others had gone to East Legon to rob a Chinese construction firm last Saturday. However, a team of policemen who had ambushed them around the company�s premises followed them as they trailed the pick-up vehicle that contained GH�10,000 being the weekly wages of workers of the said company. When they approached Airport West area, Razak and his gang who were then in a Nissan March taxi cab with registration number GS 4978-09, crossed the vehicle of their targets amidst firing of gunshots, resulting in a fierce exchange between them and the police. Razak and one of his accomplices, Abu aka Odogo, who is said to have recently benefited from the Justice for All Programme, were hit and both died while being conveyed to the hospital. Two others, Patrick Ketor, 25, driver, and Hamza Yakubu, 26, a secondhand clothes dealer at Old Fadama, were arrested and detained. Sources at Agbogbloshie disclosed that Abu�s wife had delivered a baby on the same morning the robbers were killed. Meanwhile, the two survivors of the Airport robbery, Hamza and Ketor, have been arraigned before an Accra Circuit Court presided over by Eric Kyei Baffour. The two were charged on two counts of attempted robbery and conspiracy to rob, to which they pleaded not guilty. They were remanded into police custody to reappear on August 9, 2011. By Rocklyn Antonio & Henrietta Abayie