Robert Owusu, 33, has been confirmed dead after a pillar collapsed on him at Offinso. Robert, a mason, was going to the store of a client at the Offinso market for his money after he had completed an assignment the client had given him when he met his untimely death.
Eye witness Deborah Nyarko, a market woman who shares a shop in the same building the pillar collapsed, narrated that, the pillar had not shown any signs of broken joints or problems and it was the same pillar they have been using ever since the construction of the stores in 2004. Deborah, who called the incident an accident, hinted that the pillar wasn’t loose before it collapsed on Robert but preliminary investigations from the Dunkwa Fire service department proved otherwise.
The pillar was not just old but needed fixing because it was loose from the joints and that caused it to collapse, the preliminary report from the fire team stated. The report blamed the contractors for not adjusting the joint enough and further recommended the arrest of the building owner to the police for putting civilians in harm way. If the pillar wasn’t loose, it wouldn’t have collapsed, the report from the Dunkwa Fire Service men stated.
Robert, according to initial reports, was holding the pillar while he stood in front of a store waiting for the client that had given him the job before the pillar fell on him. I saw nothing except a loud sound. We came out of the shop and he was lying dead with no life in him, Deborah narrated to the police in her report last night.
Deborah, a shop owner and the owner of the building, was arrested last night when the report from the fire service men placed her responsible for the collapsed pillar that killed Robert. Though Deborah had ignored reports that the pillar was weak and needed fixing when most of the occupants of the building reported to her personally. Eva Oforiwaa, a shop owner in the building, also confirmed to the police of reporting to the building owner, Deborah Nyarko of the weak pillar hanging but nothing was done to it.
Deborah who inherited the building from her late father in 2013, had disputed the argument of her tenants and others calling the building pillars weak and called for a thorough investigation on all the pillars of the building. We used reinforced steel and concrete in making those pillars, it is sad Robert had to die but this is never negligence and if I had seen anything bad, I would have fixed it, Deborah said at the Offinso police station last night.
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