The Chief Executive Officer of
the National Ambulance Service, Prof. Ahmed Zakaria has revealed that the armed
robbers who shot to death an ambulance driver did not only rob a pregnant woman
in labour, but also sexually assaulted a female paramedic who was onboard the
vehicle.
Abraham Tetteh Homeku was
attacked and shot more than six times by the armed robbers on Thursday dawn
while he was transporting a pregnant woman from the Akuse Government Hospital
to the Eastern Regional Hospital in Koforidua.
He was rushed to the Korle Bu
Teaching Hospital where he died on Saturday.
In an interview with Joy News,
Prof. Ahmed Zakaria stated that the incident has adversely affected the work of
the Ambulance Service with morale at an all-time low.
According to him, people
initially were trying to rationalize that the robbers might have mistaken the
ambulance to be a police car due to the blurring siren, however, the robbers’
actions after realizing the vehicle was an ambulance shows how callous they
are.
“…For the armed robbers to get
close identify it as an ambulance, shot the driver and still shoot the vehicle,
force the patient compartment open, see a patient lying on a stretcher being
attended to by a paramedic and still go ahead to rob them and manhandle them is
something that we are yet to come to terms with. We never would have believed
that such a thing will happen.”
“After everything, they forced
the poor lady to go and switch off the engine because they felt that siren and
the beacon light was drawing attention. So now, the paramedic and the patient
were in the patient compartment and normally it is locked. They had to force open,
shot the vehicle, force it open, rob the poor girl of her telephone and
whatever was on her, fondle her breast…There were two of them, the driver who’s
a male, and a female paramedic who was attending to the patient.
As for the driver he was shot in the eye and the head and so
he definitely would have lost consciousness and so with the head on the
steering wheel with his seat belt still on he could not move at all. So now
they had to force the poor girl to leave the patient compartment to go and switch
the engine off all this time with a gun pointed at her head, something that is
traumatic that it will be very difficult for the lady to recover immediately
unless with some psychological support,” Prof. Ahmed Zakaria added.
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