Speed up investigation into Jirapa Dubai CEO’s death - Residents demand
Residents of Jirapa and other parts of the Upper West Region have called on the police to ramp up investigation into the murder of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Royal Cosy Hill Hotel, popularly known Jirapa Dubai.
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They said the assassination of Eric Johnson, a native of Jirapa, had dealt a big blow to the development of the Upper West Region and thrown the people into shock and anxiety.
A cross-section of businessmen and businesswomen interviewed in the region described the incident as barbaric, particularly, as it happened after similar unravelled incidents in the region.
A businessman, Hissein Yakubu, said Johnson’s death, which happened around the same time as that of his own wife, threw him into a state of agony.
Sariatu Nuhu described the death of the man as very sad, while Bismark Osei-Owusu wondered how a great investor's life could be cut short, saying “it sounds like a dream”.
Philanthropist
The late Johnson was an entrepreneur and philanthropist, who awarded scholarships to several students at all levels of education and sponsored many public interest programmes.
He was found dead on the morning of Sunday, February 11, 2024, stabbed multiple times to death inside a room in his private Villa on the hotel premises.
A ladder was found leaning on the outside of the wall of the hotel on the morning Johnson was found dead.
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His private vehicle was supposedly taken away by the assassin.
The Royal Cosy Hill Hotel, which he founded, has a four-acre zoo attached, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and a drinking water factory which employs about 300 youth, mostly recruited from the locality.
Since the incident, however, operations at the hotel have come to a standstill following the arrest of the Manager, a German-trained engineer, as one of the suspects.
Seven persons, all staff of the hotel, are assisting police investigations into the matter.
One other resident, Juliet Bayor, said she was now living in fear because with the killing of the CEO in his bedroom, within the hotel with all the security arrangements in place, nobody in the community was safe.
She said she could vouch that the hotel founder would not hurt anyone, adding, however, that “that did not save him”.
Natives
In other unravelled cases involving natives of Jirapa, Richard Badombie, a lawyer and Assembly Member of the Jirapa Municipal Assembly was killed by some assassins, who blocked the road for a purported road check, near Nuoyiri around Banda Nkwanta in the Savannah Region, on May 28, 2022.
In his attempts to car open the door for them to check, they shot him dead when he opened his car for them to check and fled into the bush without taking anything from the vehicle.
Then on October 11, 2021, an assassination attempt was made on the Presiding Member of the Jirapa Municipal Assembly, Ebenezer Ayemah, at Jirapa, but he escaped.