Victim’s Father Testifies In Kasoa Teen ‘Killers’ Trial

It was all emotions in an Accra High Court yesterday when Frank Mensah Abdallah, father of an 11-year-old boy killed by two teenagers in Kasoa in 2021, for money ritual, entered the witness box to testify in their trial. The father who was struggling to keep his emotions in check narrated his last phone conversation as well as his last moments with the deceased before he was murdered by the money hungry minors, one whom was his friend.

He said in April 2021, he was in Nkwanta in the Oti region, when Ishmael Mensah Abdallah called asking him to come visit because it had been a long time he visited and he promised to so do. He said the late son called the second time telling him that the Easter vacation was a long one “so I should try and come and visit them. I replied that, I’ve heard and that I will come.”

Mr. Abdallah said he left Nkwanta on Friday, and arrived in Kasoa on Saturday morning and went home where he met the deceased and his mother. “…I walked to the bed and tapped him ‘Ishmael, Ishmael’, he raised his head up and looked at my face. He woke up to embrace me. I told him to go and pray and come back. While he returned from praying, I asked him what he had for me since he said I should come.

He exited the room and returned again. And he said ‘Daddy, I had kept an egg for you,” an emotional Mr. Abdallah recalled. He said he made the deceased’s mother fry the egg and prepare tea for them which they took and he decided to rest since he had embarked on a long journey and was feeling fatigued, “so he picked up his laptop, and moved from the bed room to the sitting room.

I fell asleep.” He told the court that he was asleep when he heard the mother banging on the door while shouting, ‘Daddy, Daddy, Ishmael has been killed’. I woke up to ask ‘Who killed Ishmael?. Mr. Abdallah said he rushed outside and went to the crime scene where he saw his son lying in the room of an uncompleted building and father of one of the accused persons was holding both suspects by their hands.

He said he asked about who killed his son and the accused person’s father told them to confess to what they had done. “When the father said so, the two could not say anything but stared at each other. That was when I asked the first accused, what offence Ishmael done to him that had made him kill him. First accused said it was second accused who killed Ishmael. Second accused also said it was first accused who killed Ishmael,” Mr. Abdallah added. Hearing continues today.