Three young men were yesterday sentenced to a total of 45 years imprisonment by an Accra circuit court for robbery.
They are Francis Asare aka Joe driver, George Mental aka Tiger, trader and Ishmael Amenu, barber.
The three paddies according to the prosecutors, Chief Inspector K. Adu on May 29, this year, at McCarty Hill in Accra, conspired and robbed one Joseph Odartey Lamptey, a taxi driver, of his Toyota Yaris with registration number GG 2679-16.
The police officer told the court, Presided over by Aboagye Tandoh, that the convicts violently attacked him with a screw driver.
The accused persons, who did not have lawyers, variously admitted to the charges of conspiracy to rob and robbery and were convicted on their own plea of guilty simplicita,
Sentencing the three, the judge said the court had taken into consideration the convicts plea for mercy and the one week they had been on remand.
Mr Tandoh said the accused persons chose to enrich themselves the easiest way without taking into consideration the judicial consequences.
The judge accordingly slapped the three with 15 years jail term each on each count to run concurrently.
Narrating the series of events leading to the arrest of the convicts, C/Insp. Adu said on May 28, they planned to snatch a taxi and sell it to one Wise who is currently on the run.
He said on May 29, at about 1:56 am Joseph was driving his car and that on reaching Awoshie junction, a suburb of Accra, the convicts stopped him and asked him to take them to New Bortiano, near Accra.
C/Insp. Adu said on reaching a section of the road at Bortianor, the trio asked Joseph to stop which he obliged, adding that all of a sudden, Amenu, who was sitting behind the driver, held his neck against the seat rest and Joe stabbed his left hand with a screw driver.
The court further heard that the men eventually pushed Joseph out of the vehicle and sped off to Langma near Kokrobitey and hid in the bush where they had kept the vehicle for a prospective buyer.
He said the natives of the village suspected the posture of the convicts who sped off when they were confronted, compelling them to chase Joe who was arrested with the vehicle.
C/Inspector Adu said Tiger and Amenu, who managed to escape, were arrested at their hideouts.
<<Print>>