A police constable in Accra is said to have killed himself with his own gun while on official duty last Wednesday in what the police have described as ‘accidental discharge.’
The act is widely suspected to be suicide, but ASP Effia Tenge, spokesperson of the Accra Regional Police Command, told DAILY GUIDE the shooting was purely accidental.
Though earlier reports gave the name of the deceased as Constable Salifu Iddrisu, ASP Tenge told this paper that the deceased was rather Constable Issifu Seidu of the Formed Police Unit (FPU).
He was said to have been part of a team that rounded up suspected armed robbers from various parts of the Greater Accra Region and took them to the Regional Police Command.
Not long after arrival from official duty, according to the police officer, Constable Seidu reportedly returned into the patrol van, ostensibly to look for his mobile phone which he claimed he could not find and thought it might have fallen in the vehicle.
ASP Tenge narrated further that not long after he (Seidu) had left the vehicle, a gunshot was heard from the direction he went and when his colleagues rushed to the scene, they found him in a pool of blood screaming in agony with a gaping hole created by a bullet in the lower part of his body.
He was immediately rushed to the Police Hospital but was pronounced dead a few minutes after arrival.
Preliminary investigations showed the constable might have mistakenly pulled the trigger of the gun he was carrying, probably forgetting that the gun had been corked.
The ASP said the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) had taken up the case for more critical analysis and investigation.
