Suicide
FEAR HAS gripped residents of Offinso-Namong in the Offinso South district of the Ashanti Region after a teacher allegedly hanged himself to death on Wednesday morning in the town.
The deceased, Opoku Boateng, a teacher at Asante Mampong, at about 6am ended his life by hanging himself with a sponge in an uncompleted building located near his house.
According to Seth Amoah, an eyewitness, the 28-year-old teacher was seen in the morning holding a green sponge but nobody suspected he was going to hang himself.
Minutes after that, Amoah noted, some persons were heard screaming that the teacher whose father hailed from the town had committed suicide by hanging himself in an uncompleted building.
When they rushed to the scene, the eyewitness said, they saw the deceased hanging and quivering but he passed away a few minutes later.
They therefore called in the police who quickly rushed to the scene and conveyed the body to St Patrick Hospital morgue at Offinso, the district capital.
Amoah told DAILY GUIDE in a telephone interview that the deceased arrived in his father’s hometown on Sunday after complaining that he was being haunted by some spirits at his teaching base, Asante Mampong.
He said checks revealed that the deceased recently caned one of his students for wrongdoing but the mother of the boy did not take it kindly and therefore stormed the school to assault the teacher.
The case was reported to the police who forwarded the matter to the court. The court ordered the mother to compensate the teacher with an amount of GH¢400 for misconduct.
Amoah indicated that the mother, upon giving the money to the teacher, said the teacher would pay dearly for taking such an amount from her as compensation for beating him.
Due to the threat, the teacher decided to return the money but the mother refused to take it, a development which forced the teacher to keep the money.
A few days after, the eyewitness noted, the deceased started complaining about being haunted by spirits and therefore reported the matter to his headmaster who gave him permission to go and seek a solution to it.
Amoah noted that after arriving in his father’s hometown, the deceased was spotted looking very disturbed in town till he decided to take his life, Wednesday morning, by hanging himself.
From Morgan Owusu, Kumasi
