The sole survivor of the famous Deadly Voyage stowaway story in 1992, Kingsley Ofosu has been granted bail of GH¢2,000,000 with two sureties.
However, he has not been able to fulfil the conditions and is still in custody. Ofosu was arrested in Prampram on October 14, 2023, for his involvement in an alleged €120,000 scam.
He is accused of taking money from a complainant in Germany to ship vehicles and printing machines to Ghana, but never doing so.
In 1992, Ofosu made international headlines after he survived the slaughter of a group of African stowaways by the crew of a cargo ship.
He was the only survivor of the attack, which was dramatized in the 1996 film Deadly Voyage.
Background
Kinsley Ofosu, who made international headlines in 1992 with his miraculous survival from a stowaway trip, was arrested at Prampram on Saturday, October 14, 2023, for his involvement in an alleged €120,000 scam. He was remanded to reappear on October 30, 2023.
Complainant Charles Ohemeng told Nhyiraba Paa Kwesi Simpson, the host of Connect FM’s Omanbapa morning show through a telephone call from Germany that he met the accused in Germany in 1997 after he made international headline following his miraculously escape from the MC Ruby Cargo Ship.
He adds that the accused had become famous at the time due to the stowaway incident.
“He was famous and everyone was talking about him.
They had given him legal documents and so he was moving from Europe to Ghana anytime he wanted. I met him in Germany in 1997 and decided to ship some vehicles and printing machines through him to Ghana. He agreed and we started buying the vehicles.
I bought Mercedes Benz, tanker, Nissan, double axle vehicle, Opel, printing machines, and many others amounting to about 240,000 deutschmark ( an equivalent of €120,000) at the time. I shipped them to him in Ghana and that was the end of everything. I did not hear from him again until his arrest today,” he indicated.
In 1992, Kinsley Ofosu made international headlines after he survived the slaughter of a group of African stowaways by the crew of a Bahamian-flagged Ukrainian crewed cargo ship, MC Rugby.
The ship was docked in Takoradi to load cocoa. The stowaways had planned to travel to Europe for a better life. After hiding in the ship for some days, they came across another stowaway who was on the ship from Cameroon.
They were later found by crew members of the ship who decided to slaughter them one after the other. In all, Kinsley Ofosu’s half-brother, Albert Cudjoe who was on the ship together with seven others, was gruesomely murdered. Kinsley Ofosu was the only survivor.
The sad story of Ofosu was dramatized in a 1996 film dubbed ‘Deadly Voyage’.
The film was produced by Union Pictures and distributed to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Home Box Office (HBO). Omar Epps starred as Ofosu.
