A 19-year-old unemployed man, Kwame Frimpong, cried when the Tema High Court sentenced him to 35 years imprisonment with hard labour for armed robbery.
Frimpong, who looked remorseful during the sentencing, pleaded with the trial judge, Mrs Justice Lorinda Owusu to temper justice with mercy as he had had a sober reflection on the incident throughout the period he had been in custody.
The judge, who did not mince words at the conduct of the convict, however, stood her ground and cautioned that she would not hesitate to mete out stiffer punishment to unemployed youths who continued to use brutal means to reap from where they had not sown and endangered the lives of their victims in the process.
Frimpong, who was charged on two counts of conspiracy to commit crime and robbery, pleaded guilty on both counts and was convicted on his plea.
According to the prosecution, led by Chief Inspector Adolphus Otchere, the complainant in the case, is a filling station attendant at Kubekro No 1, a suburb of Ashaiman, while the convict resides in the Ashaiman municipality.
At about 7p.m. on August 22, 2007, Frimpong and two other accomplices, now at large, visited the filling station apparently to rob.
Frimpong kept surveillance nearby, while the two, accomplices entered the premises wielding locally manufactured pistols, matchetes, and other harmful implements and ordered the attendant to surrender the day’s sales.
During the struggle with the assailants, the attendant raised an alarm, but they managed to escape with GH¢100 they had forcefully collected from him after firing indiscriminately into the air.
An eye witness who was on a hunting expedition in a nearby bush, heard gunshots from the direction of the filling station and opened fire on the robbers. He hit Frimpong in the leg as he run out of his hideout, thereby slowing his movement.
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