“I plead with the court to forgive me. It was not my intention to kill my dear friend and to also end my life this way. I pray the court forgives all my sins and gives me a second chance,” words of the convicted minor in the Kasoa ritual murder.
15 years old at the time of the offence, the minor and his friend, 18-year-old Nicholas Kini were involved in the killing of 10-year-old Ishmael Mensah Abdullah for ritual money in 2021 at Kasoa.
The duo was convicted of murder, following a unanimous guilty verdict by a seven-member jury in October last year. The boys were found guilty on two counts of conspiracy to commit murder and murder.
The second convict, Nicholas Kini, now 21 was sentenced to life imprisonment and has subsequently begun his sentence.
Now 18, the first accused filled with regret and tears pleaded with the family of the victim after the court asked him for his final words before judgement.
“I pray that Ishmael’s father forgives me as I have played with Ishmael for a very long time. I never planned to kill him. It was the devil,” he blurted out in the direction of the bereaved family members.
Presiding magistrate, Bernice Mensima Ackon sentenced him to 12 detention in senior correctional centre after affirming that he was on remand for three years and two months.
She also held that the juvenile confessed to the offence and was consistent in his accounts of events throughout the trial. He also showed remorse evidenced by how he sobbed intermittently during the trial.
Commenting on his detention, Mensima Ackon said she found out he was detained in an adult cell for more than three years contrary to law and was detained far more than what the law prescribes for a juvenile for the offence of murder.
“The juvenile has duly served his sentence which is three years but because of the gravity of the offence and the juvenile saying he dropped out of school at P6 and his intention was to learn a technical vocation, the court will therefore sentence him to a senior correctional centre for 12 months in order to learn what he had always dreamed to learn,” the magistrate concluded.
Background
According to the prosecution’s fact of the case, on March 29, 2021, the accused persons consulted a fetish priestess for money rituals.
Based in Volta Region, the ritualist is reported to have requested GH¢5,000 and a human being to perform the rituals. On April 3, 2021, the accused persons, according to the prosecution, decided to use the deceased in furtherance of their “Sakawa” mission.
At about 9:00am on the same day, the 15-year-old lured Ishmael Mensah into an uncompleted building where the second accused, Nicholas Kini had laid ambush with the club of a pickaxe.
“As soon as the deceased arrived, they told him to remove a video game from a sack they had deposited in a corner of the room.
“When the deceased bent down in an attempt to remove the said video game from the sack, the second accused struck him at the back of his neck with the club, causing him to fall,” the Prosecutor noted.
Bewildered at the turn of events, the victim went on his knees and turned to the first accused to have mercy on him and not kill him. His pleas were however ignored by the minor and struck his head with a nearby cement block.
As a result, the deceased became unconscious but was still breathing.
The accused persons, the prosecution added then used a spade and a shovel to dig a shallow grave in the uncompleted building and buried the 10-year-old temporarily intending to transport him to the ritualist.
