Unidentified illegal miners have shot a member of the Rapid Response Unit (RRU) of the Forestry Commission (FC), John Baba Konlan in the head and back in the Cape 3 Points Forest Reserve in the Western Region.
According to information from the Forest Services Division’s Takoradi Forest District Office, there were some illegal miners working in the Reserve at a location close to the Morrison Community.
Nine staff members, including members of the Rapid Response Unit and Forest Guards, were quickly sent to the location to verify the accuracy of the information.
After arriving in the Reserve, three members were left in the operation vehicle while the other nine continued their hour-long walk through the forest to the illegal mining site.
The team members saw a dugout pit with illegal miners working diligently at “dig and wash” from a distance.
The team members decided to take different paths in order to be able to surround and capture the illegal miners.
A team member claimed that a few minutes after they had arrived at the pit via their individual routes, he heard gunshots and immediately became alert, scanning the area for any indication of danger.
As he moved forward, he noticed the illegal miners leaving their working tools behind and running into the forest.
After a short while, he claimed, he heard one of his team members screaming and pleading with the others to help Mr. Konlan, who had been shot, because they were all needed.
As a result, the Team cancelled the entire exercise, carried Mr. Konlan back to where their car was parked for more than an hour through the forest while he was throwing up blood.
They transported him to the Western Region’s Effia Nkwanta Government Hospital. He was sent to the Cape Coast Regional Medical Centre for additional care.
He was then sent on to the University of Ghana Medical Centre in Accra, where he was initially admitted but later released and asked to come in for a review in the following two weeks.
A CT Scan carried out on Mr Konlan indicated, among others, that a “Non-contrast serial axial CT scan of the head with bone windows shows multiple metallic bullets, one located in the left temporoparietal, went through the bone into the brain from the left temporal and parietal to the left occipital and into the right lobes”.
“There are other bullets that did not enter the brain or fracture any bone; 2 are left in the left frontal scalp, one in the left parietal at the vertex, multiple lodged close to the angle of the left mandible, and one in the soft tissue of the right neck”.
Since the case was brought to the Takoradi Central Police Station’s attention, no arrests have been made.
The Rapid Response Team’s employees have recently come under severe attack from illegal loggers.
This is the second incident to occur in the past six weeks; the first was the abduction of Mr. Vitus Yourdong in the Asukese Forest Reserve in the Bono Region.
He was a member of a Rapid Response Team sent into the Reserve to apprehend unauthorised chainsaw users.
He was kidnapped, held captive for more than two weeks, and then dumped at a landfill in the Eastern Region at Nkwakaw- Asona.