Ex-soldier and pastor jailed for beating Taxi driver to death over ‘Fake’ GH₵50 note

Nii Ayitey Brown 17:18 - 22 February 2026

A retired soldier and a pastor have been jailed for six months by an Accra High Court after being found guilty of manslaughter in the death of a taxi driver during a dispute over a suspected fake GH₵50 note.

Accra High Court has sentenced a retired soldier and a pastor to six months in prison after they were found guilty of manslaughter and conspiracy in connection with the death of a taxi driver over a disputed GH₵50 note.

The sentence was handed down on Friday, 21 February 2026, after a seven-member jury unanimously convicted the two men in a case that began with a simple shop purchase nearly eight years ago.

The tragic incident dates back to 1 March 2018, when 32-year-old taxi driver Solomon Dapaah stopped at a provisions shop in New Abiadjei, a suburb of Accra, to buy a soft drink for GH₵10. He paid with a GH₵50 note.

The shop owner, who is mother of the second accused, thought the GH₵50 note was fake and raised an alarm. This prompted Joseph Abusah, a retired military officer, and Pastor Benjamin Kofi Agbetiafah to pursue Dapaah’s taxi vehicle.

The chase ended on the outskirts of New Abiadjei, where the taxi could no longer move. Abusah blocked the taxi with his pickup, and in the ensuing confrontation, Dapaah was pulled from his vehicle and violently beaten.

Both men bound Dapaah’s hands and feet with rope and took him to the Agbogba Police Station in the pickup truck. When police officers saw his serious injuries, they escorted all three, including the injured driver, to the Agbogba Clinic, where Dapaah was pronounced dead on arrival.

A post-mortem examination carried out on 13 March 2018 by a pathologist at the Police Hospital, Accra, concluded that Dapaah’s death was due to severe head injury resulting from lynching, classifying it as an unnatural death.

The Accra High Court trial, presided over by Justice Lydia Osei Marfo, followed years of legal proceedings. The jury found both men guilty of conspiracy and manslaughter, the lesser offence that covers unlawful killing without the intent to murder.

Justice Marfo handed down six-month jail terms to each man for both counts, to run concurrently. The sentencing took into account both the prosecution’s arguments and mitigation pleas from defence lawyers, who described the convicts as first-time offenders.

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