He witnessed from infancy how his dad shot his mother to death over a change of money.
“My father was a hunter at Nkawkaw. He gave my mother money to get me circumcised and left for hunting. He came back without a game so he asked my mother for a change but my mother could not produce it. During an altercation between them, my dad pointed his gun at my mother. As they struggled, the gun unclogged and shot my mother to death,” Kweku Steven tells crimecheckghana.org.
Steven claimed he was a dislike of many including his own relatives. He had to live with his grandmother because his home was torn apart.
According to him, he started sleeping outside because he could not earn the admiration of his grandparents who always accused him of being a wayward child.
“I slept in front of a shop because anytime I got home, the door was locked. Nobody cared about me any longer and my grandfather who lived abroad stopped supporting me because of the lies they told him about me. I was doing petty thievery,” he said.
Steven said he joined one of the deadliest robbery gangs in Nkawkaw after he was recommended for his recruitment into the group of hardened criminals. His smartness and smallish body stature caught the attention of the robbers.
Steven said he was used by the gang to loot shops. “The gang break into shops and push me through to steal the items for them and then they will give me money to buy food,” he recounted.
Kweku Steven who does not know his age, led one of the gang’s huge robberies out of which they realized an alleged Five Hundred Ghana cedis booty.
But Steven betrayed the group, which led to the arrest of its leading members for giving him a paltry share.
“We rid the shop of half of its goods and stole a briefcase containing an amount of Ghc 500,000. But they gave me only Ghc 500. I was expecting at least Five Thousand Ghana cedis but they did not,” he confessed.
Steven was spared but was however arrested in a solo theft incident in which he stabbed the victim.
He was jailed for three years at the Koforidua Local Prison in the Eastern Region after the prosecutor who handled his case told the court he was 22 years old.
He is currently serving the rest of his at the Awutu Camp Prison as a transferred prisoner.
