Bullion van robbery: Doctors remove pellets from shot driver’s chest

• The driver is said to have suffered gunshot penetrations on parts of his body including his chest, limbs and forearms

• The driver was shot by gunmen who attacked a bullion van he was driving at Jamestown on Monday

• A police officer on escort duty on the attacked van and a hawker died

A Korle Bu Teaching Hospital Surgeon, Dr Fredrick Kwarteng, has revealed the extent of injury suffered by the 35-year-old driver of the bullion van attacked by armed robbers on Monday, June 14, 2021, at Jamestown, a suburb in Accra.

In a JoyNews interview monitored by GhanaWeb, Dr Kwarteng revealed that the driver, Eric Okyere suffered bullet penetrations in various parts of his body including his chest, limbs and forearms.

He further detailed how the team at Korle Bu worked to save the life of the driver who according to the doctor is now in a stable condition.

“Our assessment shows that the bullet had penetrated the chest wall and damaged vessels and was bleeding heavily into the chest. He also had bullets in the thoracic spine and then also the gunshot injury damaged the right hand.

“There were pellets in the whole of the right upper limb, in the arm and the forearm. As soon as he was brought, though he was fully conscious, he was drowsy and he was in shock with very low blood pressure. In fact, his blood pressure was about 80 systolic and 50 diastolic. So it meant he was in severe shock and we started resuscitation.

“We tried to stabilise him, now in the process of resuscitation, we noticed that even though we were giving him many fluids and blood transfusion, his blood pressure kept dropping and so we did further evaluation and realized he was bleeding actively in the chest and had accumulated a lot of blood in the chest which would have been detrimental to his survival. So as an emergency procedure, we put the chest tube into the chest to drain the blood but we realized that whiles we were draining the blood, he was still bleeding profusely in the chest.

“So yesterday in the night, around 9 pm he was rushed to the theatre by the Cardiothoracic surgeon where he had thoracotomy, in other words, surgery that opens the chest, to stop all the bleeding points and to be stabilised. So as we speak he had surgery yesterday and he is fairly stable but he is still under recovery watch,” he stated.

The robbery attack on the bullion van by a yet to be identified gang of robbers left a police officer on escort duty, General Constable Emmanuel Osei who was on escort duty and a hawker, Afua Badu dead.

The driver of the vehicle on the bullion van however survived the attack with gunshot wounds while two bank tellers who were also in the car fled unharmed.

The robbers left the scene with an AK-47 belonging to the police officer and an undisclosed cash sum.

The Ghana Police Service following the incident has announced a GH₵20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the culprits.