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| Major Adam Mahama |
At the Reception Hall
at 3FM, TV3’s sister station, in Accra, were two security men on duty that very
night. They sat dejectedly and seemingly talking to the television set that
hung on the wall.
The two guys were
fuming that my “good evening” to them was submerged in their rants. Showing on
the television was News@10 on TV3. The
Anchor was Stephen Anti and he was serving his viewers what would become, in my
estimation, the most unpalatable news since the year 2017 began.
A soldier had been
brutally lynched at Denkyira-Obuase in the Central Region. The soldier, Captain
Maxwell Adam Mahama, suffered in the hands of his accusers an excruciating pain
of unfathomable weaponry of cement blocks and sticks. This pain, not even the boxers
that once fought with Muhammad Ali could have endured it.
So, what was Captain
Adam Mahama’s crime? Media reports have suggested that he had stopped on his
way, for jogging, to buy some ‘food items’ from a market woman by the road side
that leads to Denkyira-Obuase. These food items he would leave it with the
woman to pick them up on his way back. When he dipped his hand into his pocket
for money to pay for the goods, the woman saw his side gun. This woman, we are
told, later called the Assemblyman for the area that he had seen an armed
robber.
The rest of the story
ended up that this Assemblyman, William Baah, allegedly incited his people to
stone Captain Adam Mahama to death. And this was the very rant of the two
security men that manned 3FM on that Monday, May 29.
When I returned to the
newsroom with my editor, as we had closed, to work on this breaking news, I
could hardly understand how cruel human beings could be at times. There on
social media was a video of a murder which I believe that even when Al-Shabaab,
the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIS] and the Taliban see it they
would be surprised at.
I must confess that I
have heard, read, and watched a number of crime stories as reported by the
media. However, two of all these crime stories get me heartbroken. One is that
of Captain Adam Mahama’s death and the other involving a man named Oba Chandler
and a woman and her two daughters referred to as the Rogers.
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| Oba Chandler |
On June 1, 1989,
Florida in the United States of America recorded one of its most notorious
homicide cases. Joan Rogers, 36, Michelle Rogers, 17, and Christie Rogers, 14,
from Ohio had travelled for vacation in Florida.
Here, they had visited
Tampa Bay [a large natural harbour and estuary] and they would ask for
directions from Chandler to their motel since they lost they way. This man
would later lure the women, Joan Rogers [a mother and her two daughters; Michelle
Rogers and Christie Rogers] for a cruise at night. However, little did they know
that cruising onboard Chandler’s boat would be the hard way to say goodbye to
the world. Yes!
Oba Chandler had raped
all these three women, one after the other, and hanged to their necks each a
cinder blocks and threw them into the Tampa Bay. Three days later, on June 4,
Sunday morning, coast guards discovered the floating dead bodies staggering on
the waters.
“The women were pulled
from Tampa Bay, bound, gagged, and naked below the waist,” writes the Daily
Mail, UK.
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| Coast Guards discover the Rogers' bodies |
Mind
you, this is not a thriller to any movie. This is a real account. Sergeant
Glenn Moore who led the investigations had found out that the Rogers received a
hand-written note for the direction they asked for. This handwriting was
subsequently pasted on giant boards in town telling citizens to help figure out
whose handwriting it was.
Four months into the investigations,
police found a 24-year-old Canadian woman who also had been sexually assaulted by
Oba Chandler. She was onboard the same blue and white boat when the unfortunate
incident happened. This dastardly act took place only two weeks to the Rogers’
deaths.
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| The Rogers |
This Canadian woman would
later help the police craft a composite sketch of the rapist through a vivid
description of how her abuser looked like. When the image was published in the
newspapers, it got massive attention. Immediately a neighbour of Oba Chandler, Jo
Ann Steffey, saw the composite image she knew it was that man known for notoriety.
After a long legal
tassel as the prosecutor presented strong evidences together with the Canadian
woman’s account, all against the rapist and serial killer, Oba Chandler was on
September 29, 1994, sentenced to death. And, indeed, he was killed.
Thomas French, a
reporter with the St Petersburg Times, in 1998 won a Pulitzer Prize [award]
when he chronicled, in a seven-part series titled “Angels & Demons,” the horrifying narrative of Oba Chandler and
the Rogers.
The gruesome murder of
Captain Adam Mahama and that of the Angels
and Demons may be two opposite accounts. However, one thing binds the two
murder stories; the tendency of human beings getting cruel at times.
Sergeant Glenn Moore, who
later retired to preach the word of God, once said while commenting on the case
he investigated that “Angels and demons are high in arms, in battle, over the
souls of men.”
Indeed, the people
around us including ourselves are either part of the angels or part of the
demons that are bettering or destroying the world. What could have annoyed men
with brains to pelt their fellow human being with cements blocks to death? And
what could have caused a man to rape a mother and her two daughters and murder
them afterwards?
Oba Chandler was killed
for his heinous crimes. Must Captain Adam Mahama’s killers be killed too? My
view? Well, as DCE Kwame Kwakye is alleged to have once said; “I’m the who?” We
leave it to the law.
However, should the law
court find them guilty and say they are sentenced to jail ‘with hard labour,’ I
only request that that labour be a daily ritual of excessive military drills at
the Burma Camp. By this, we will all desist from mob justice and from evil
ways.
The writer is a
broadcast journalist with 3FM 92.7. Views expressed here solely remain his and
not that of his organisation.
Email: nehusthan4@yahoo.com
Twitter: @Aniwaba
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