Police Hunt Man for Poisoning Children to Death

By Kingsley E. Hope and Faustina Kwabea Osei

Kumasi — The Police have mounted a search for a 27-year-old man, who allegedly killed his two children, by poisoning them, at Deduako Apemso New Site, in the Oforikrom municipality of Ashanti.

Kofi Maafo Arquam, carpenter, and suspect, was said to have offered poisoned biscuits to the children, who died shortly after eating them.

The suspect, who is on the run, was said to have carried out the gruesome act due to an alleged infidelity of her divorced wife, Faustina Antwiwaa.

But other sources claimed it was as a result of financial burden that had taken a heavy toll on him, which forced the wife to desert him.

Maafo was said to have abandoned the bodies of the four and two-year-old daughter and son respectively, in an uncompleted building at Apemso New Site, where clothes belonging to the children, a knife and two kitchen stools were found.

Some residents of the area informed the police who went and conveyed the bodies to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology's (KNUST) Medical School mortuary for an autopsy.

According to the police, the bodies were found at their advanced stage of decomposition on Sunday, September 15, 2019 at about 8am.

The Head of the Public Affairs Unit of the Ashanti Police Command, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Godwin Ahianyo confirmed the incident to the Ghanaian Times here.

He said, Arquah and the mother of the children, Antwiwaa, 26, resident of Tech Junction, had divorced about two months ago.

ASP Ahianyo said that on September 5, 2019, Arquah who lived at Apemso took the children from Antwiwaa so that they would live with his mother at Sefwi in the Western Region.

According to ASP Ahianyo, Antwiwaa did not hear from Arquah again till information reached her about the death of the children on the Sunday.

A resident of the area told the Ghanaian Times, a week ago, the suspect said he was going to travel with the children only for their bodies to be found in the uncompleted building.

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