The death of an unidentified man in his 30s between Batabi and Akyem Manso on the Oda-Accra main road has provoked controversy between the police and a section of residents of the Birim Central municipality. While the police claim that the man, whose body is mutilated, was knocked down and killed by a hit-and-run driver, the residents insist that he was murdered in cold blood for ritual purposes. According to the police, since no part of the deceased's body was removed, his death could not be attributed to ritual murder, but the residents claim that he might have been killed and his blood sucked by the ritual murderers before throwing the body on the main road as if he had been knocked down and killed by a speeding vehicle. The residents buttress their point with the alleged recent murder threat on the lives of two people in the municipality who escaped death by a hair's breadth. They stress that if the deceased had been knocked by a vehicle, he would have been identified by his relatives, since he died last Saturday. In an interview, the Oda Municipal Police Commander, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Victor Amaning Kwarteng, said around 5.30 a.m. last Saturday, January 16, this year, police personnel on patrol duty reported to him that a hit-and-run driver had killed a male adult between Batabi and Manso. He said the policemen told him that if the killer-driver had rushed the deceased to hospital, he might have survived but he ran away after knocking him down without attending to him. ASP Kwarteng said the body of the deceased had been deposited at the Oda Govemment Hospital awaiting autopsy, while the police had mounted an intensive search for the defaulting driver. He said that was the fourth time in four months that a hit-and-run driver had killed a pedestrian on the Oda-Agona Swedru portion of the Oda-Accra main road. He said the first one occurred at Batabi last year when the speeding driver of a KIA truck with poor lighting ran into a group of people jubilating over the Black Satellites' historic World Cup victory, during which he killed a schoolgirl and seriously injured a farmer. ASP Kwarteng cited two other instances at Akyem Akroso and Akyem Bantama, also late last year, when a man ll!1d a schoolboy, respectively, were knocked down and killed by speeding hit-and-run drivers. He warned that his outfit would deal drastically with any hit-and-run driver caught in the area. Meanwhile, ASP Kwarteng has appealed to people in the municipality whose relative had been missing since last Saturday to contact his outfit or the authorities of the Oda Government Hospital to identify the deceased. Source: Daily Graphic