A 10-year old girl has been left bedridden after police officers pursuing robbers fired a bullet straight into her forehead.
Dorothy Appiah, a student of Humble Way Mission at Sowutuom in Accra was running back into the school after rattling sounds of gunshot shattered the serene atmosphere in the community she was hit.
Like frightened birds, the children who had closed from school made a dash to the classrooms in response to the beckoning call of frightened teachers.
A bullet is faster than the legs of a 10-girl old hit her.
She could not make the final lap running into the outstretched arms of her teacher, when the bullet sunk her into the ground.
Several miles away, her father Edward Asare, a taxi driver and mechanic, was looking for the next customer when he received devastating news.
“Daddy, Mummy (as Dorothy is fondly called) has been shot and she is dead”, his older son told him. The news had the psychological equivalence of the gun shot in his daughter’s skull, as the shocked father switched off his phone in denial.
His daughter was sent to the Princess Marie Louis hospital. Everyone believed she was dead.
Doctors at the 37 Military hospital concluded however that she had lapsed into a coma.
It was too dangerous to retrieve the bullet without damaging her brains. It took five days before surgery could be conducted to remove the rounded metal that has rounded up Dorothy’s once-bustling life.
“She is partially paralysed. This girl cannot move her left arm, she cannot write, she cannot do anything. For five months now, she is still at home unable to go to school”, Joy News Maxwell Agbagba narrated the story on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show Tuesday.
Her father’s face is drained of a father’s joy. She cannot move and when she speaks, she sounds illogical, he said.
The distraught man told myjoyonline.com, his daughter was at one-time, the 4th most brilliant student in her school.
Dorothy Appiah’s hospital bill has breached GHC20,000. The Police have helped with personal contribution of officers to the tune of GHC600.
Trips to the police administration for further assistance have yielded nothing.
The family, friends and father’s life savings have been sunk into taking care of a child who has shown no sign of full recovery.
Even the teachers and the school have had to contribute money to help Dorothy whose dream is to become a nurse.
With the pressing financial demands, the option of a lawsuit has proven too expensive to contemplate.
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