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The Ashanti Regional Police Command is insisting that the man gunned down by the police at Sepe-Timpom in Kumasi, last Saturday was a criminal. Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Augustine Gyening, the Regional Commander, said the deceased, Kwaku Asante, was a gangster and that he was found with a machete, a claim sharply disputed by not only by his family but the assembly member for the area. The family denies Asante engaged the police in a gun battle as the police would want the public to believe. He was only part of the youth at Sepe-Timpom, who tried to fend off an attack on their community by a marauding group of gangsters. They maintain their relative was murdered in cold blood and that he was first shot in the leg to immobilize him before the police finished him off with another shot. DCOP Gyening, however, had an entirely different side to the story. He told a press conference held to throw light on the incident that the late Asante belonged to one of the criminal gangs, terrorizing the residents and that apart from the machete the deceased was holding, he also had another cutlass concealed in the pair of trousers he was wearing. DCOP Gyening said his men had gone there to protect the law abiding citizens and could not have killed an innocent person. He said nine suspected gangsters, whose ages range from 12-17 years had been arrested and gave their names as Issaka Abubakar, Faisal Alhassan, Awudu Seizzan, Adams Rasheed, Gado Zakaria, Fuseini Adams, Surai Mohammed, Sumeila Abdullah and Kamal. Seized from them were also nine locally manufactured pistols and eight live cartridges. DCOP Gyening said members of the different criminal gangs often engage in turf fights with guns, cutlasses and other offensive weapons and attack innocent people, robbing them of their monies and other valuables at Aboabo, Sawaba and Asawasi. They do this to test the potency of the charms they wear.