TWO PUPILS DROWNED AT DANSOMAN BEACH (Page 25)

02/12/2008
Story: Mary Mensah
Two pupils of the Oral Roberts International School at Dansoman got drowned at the Dansoman beach last Friday when they went swimming after being asked by the school authorities to go home and bring their school fees.
The two boys — Joaken Larnyoh, aged 10, and Mohammed Tekpor, nine years — both class three pupils, together with three others, went to the Dansoman beach to swim and the two were swept away by the strong waves.
Narrating the unfortunate incident to the Daily Graphic in Accra, the grandfather of one of the victims, Mr Joshua Yabaku Oblokuteye, who could not hold back his tears, said on Friday while in the house the three other boys wearing only their briefs with sand all over their bodies arrived in a taxi at the house looking frightened and confused.
They informed them that they were sacked from school to go home and bring their school fees but on their way home one of them suggested that they should rather go to the beach to swim and they went.
He said according to the three boys while swimming the two deceased boys, who were the oldest among them, decided to venture into the deep waters and were swept away by the waves without any trace.
They became frightened so they ran away holding their uniforms and that of the two when they met a taxi driver who took them home after narrating the incident to him.
Mr Oblokuteye said a report was quickly made to the Dansoman Police, who accompanied some family members to the beach to inform the fishermen there to be on the lookout for the bodies of the boys.
He said on Sunday, they were informed by the fishermen that the bodies had been washed ashore at the Korle Gonno beach so they went there but the bodies had already been taken away by the Korle-Bu Police.
They proceeded to the police station and they were informed that one of the bodies was washed ashore on Saturday morning and the other on Sunday but both bodies had been deposited at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital mortuary awaiting autopsy while investigations were still underway.
He said the school authorities were notified about the incident and the headmaster, Mr Daniel Johnson, together with the proprietor of the school, Mr Albert Osei Kessi, came to plead with the families to forgive them because they did not know that the boys would go elsewhere aside their homes.