Police have arrested one suspect in connection with last Saturday’s violent robbery at a gold shop in Mpohor District, Western Region, while eight other suspects remain at large. The robbery, carried out by a heavily armed gang, left one person injured.
According to police reports, the incident happened around 7:30 p.m. when about nine masked men, armed with pump action guns, stormed two gold buying shops in Mpohor. The attackers made away with an undisclosed amount of cash and quantities of gold before shooting a 43-year-old man, Eric Kwofie. They then fled into a nearby bush.
The police confirmed that a manhunt has been launched to track down the remaining suspects, with teams deployed to pursue the armed gang. “Frantic efforts are being made to arrest all the robbers,” police said in a statement.
The Mpohor robbery was reported just a day after another attempted robbery was foiled in the Central Region. On Friday morning, around 1 a.m., the Anti-Armed Robbery Response Unit (AARU) of the Ghana Police Service stopped an attempted heist at MRB Rural Bank in Winneba.
Police said the bank’s alarm system alerted a patrol team to suspicious activity. Upon arrival, officers were met with sporadic gunfire from the robbers. After a brief exchange of fire, the gang fled, abandoning a pump action gun and burglary tools at the scene. Investigators also recovered an empty cartridge.
According to the police, about five armed men were involved in the attempted bank robbery. They had tried to break into the bank’s vault but were thwarted by the swift response of the patrol team.
Investigators believe the Winneba suspects may belong to the same gang responsible for earlier rural bank robberies in the region. “The modus operandi of this robbery gang is similar to that of the group involved in the earlier rural bank robberies,” police noted. Intelligence gathered so far suggests the suspects may be hiding in Kumasi, where surveillance teams from the AARU are conducting operations to locate their hideouts.
Police have urged the public to remain vigilant and report any suspicious activity to aid in ongoing investigations aimed at dismantling the armed robbery network.