By Alpha Abu
A young man who disappeared from Susan’s Bay in Freetown after the battered body of his 24 year-old girlfriend was discovered in a room has been apprehended and detained in Conakry, Guinea.
The suspect Ishmael Koroma was reportedly spotted by a Sierra Leonean at a fishing wharf in Conakry and knew he had been on the run following the brutal killing of his girlfriend Fatmata Sesay at the fishing community of Moa Wharf , Freetown in November last year.
A very distraught Sheka Sesay father of Fatmata told Politico he had from the start frowned at his daughter having a boyfriend relationship but was unable to stop her seeing Ishmael.
He said sometime in November 2022 he and his wife were away on separate engagements, leaving Fatmata a fishmonger smoking fish for marketing the next day. Recounting what his 16 year-old son Ibrahim told him, his daughter after finishing work went to sleep in her room where Ibrahim was also reclining late afternoon.
Ibrahim later recalled Ishmael entering the room, and then offering the teen five Leones to buy something for himself, apparently to lure him away.
Ibrahim didn’t return for hours, but just after 8pm with the door to the room shut, the boy and others knocked on his sister’s room. With no response from Fatmata, Ibrahim was hoisted so he could peep inside. After seeing the grotesque figure of Fatmata lying in the bed, the boy raised an alarm and had the room forced into.
The father said Fatmata was found dead in a pool of blood and claimed the autopsy report which he could not readily produce, stated she had stab wound on the chest, fractured skull, limbs, ribs and shoulder, indicating she was bludgeoned to death.
He alleged that Ishmael after killing Fatmata locked the door and used the window to flee from the crime scene.
He said his daughter’s boyfriend had for some time been stealing things from her room, and claimed the relationship was on a downhill, with Fatmata fed up. The two had a feisty relationship and Ishmael was accused of making death threats against Fatmata in the past.
According to Sheka when news reached him that his daughter’s suspected killer had been nabbed in Guinea, he notified officers at the Eastern Police Station where the case is being handled. He said Sierra Leoneans in Conakry who are keen to have the suspect extradited told him the Guinean officers are only waiting for clearance from their counterparts here in Freetown so they can take Amin to the border town of Pamlap and hand him over.
A video of Koroma being interviewed in handcuffs saw him confessing to the crime and even claimed that at his hideout for four days following the killing he was being briefed by someone on Fatmata’s phone that he took along after his macabre act.
Sheka looking terribly depressed could only say‘’All I desire is justice for my child’’.
Copyright © 2023 Politico Online (26/01/23)
