The Kumasi Police have arrested Mahawia Osman, a caretaker of a taxi cab with registration number GT 5488 S, in connection with the mysterious death of two children at Pankrono Estate, a suburb of Kumasi on March 5, 2008. The suspect, according to the police, admitted that he callously dumped the bodies of Fatao Issaka, 3, and Kausa Alhassan, 2, at a public toilet near a school compound in the area. Investigations conducted by the Ashanti Regional Crime Officer and his team, led to the taxi cab parked just a few meters behind a carpenter's shop near the school compound. Briefing the media in Kumasi on Tuesday, the Ashanti Regional Police Commander, ASP Seth Oteng said a careful examination of the cab during the operation revealed some fresh finger impressions on the front driver's door and that of both sides of the front windows. According to him, the police realized that the impressions on the windows were from within the cab while those on the front door were from outside. The Ashanti Regional Commander stressed that further examination of the impressions indicated that they were those of children, probably the two kids. He said the team therefore proceeded to the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) and when the kids' finger impressions were taken by two medical officers, one of them a pathologist, they concluded that the kids indeed had no marks on their bodies to suggest that they were assaulted or strangled to death. ASP Oteng said the police managed to arrest the suspect who admitted that he had dumped the bodies of the children near the school compound, explaining that he saw the bodies of the kids in the back seat of the cab around 7pm of Tuesday March 4, 2008 when he was about to put a battery on the car to start the engine. He said the suspect told the Police that the vehicle had been sold out and was to be taken away from the yard the next day, so he called the owner of the car on phone and informed him about the incident. According to ASP Oteng, the suspect said upon the advice of the car owner, he waited until 9 o'clock in the evening and surreptitiously went back into the car, removed the bodies one after the other, and deposited them at the spots where they were found the next day. The suspect explained that he had done that for fear of being involved in what he perceived as a lengthy and complicated police enquiry if the bodies were found in the car. According to the Ashanti Regional Police Commander, the doctors also explained to the police that the peeling of the skins of the kids was normal and could be attributed to intense or excessive heat which they might have been subjected to. ASP Oteng said the pathologist from KATH who performed the autopsy gave the cause of death as Aspyhxia which could be due to suffocation. He said a fingerprint expert from Accra proceeded to Kumasi, re-examined and compared the impressions left on the vehicle and those taken from the two kids, and concluded that the prints on the vehicle matched those of the children. According to him, from the police point of view, taking into consideration all the developments, they firmly believe that the kids died out of suffocation in the taxi cab. "We believe that at about 10 o'clock in the morning, the children left their house about 100 meters from where their bodies were found ostensibly to play in the school compound as they normally did," he explained. ASP Oteng pointed out that the children strayed into the vehicle out of curiosity and were unable to open the door and come out, adding that the many finger impressions left particularly on the front door windows were indications of the efforts they made to come out. The Daily Guide on the front page of its Thursday edition reported the mysterious death of the two kids in Kumasi. Source: Daily Guide