PASTOR COMMITS SUICIDE ...Family, friends totally devasted (LEAD STORY, JULY 27, 2010)

Story: George Ernest Asare, Kumasi

A gentle life, described as one devoted to the service of God and man, ended in a most brutal fashion in Kumasi about 4 p.m. yesterday when a Head Pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church allegedly blew himself up with a gun.
The reasons for that bloody end still confounds the pastor’s family and friends who responded to the ‘boom’ of the gun by rushing to the bathroom, only to meet the horror of horrors.
The Daily Graphic was part of that early group of curious persons to see Rev Nicholas Opoku-Agyeman lying supine in a pool of blood.
Spotting a black singlet over a pair of green trousers, the body was lying face up in the bathroom, with blood oozing profusely from the chest where there was a big hole, apparently from the gunshot.
In no time, the entire Nzema community near Kwadaso Agric in Kumasi, where the pastor lived with his wife and their five children, was caught up in the frenzy and stampede to witness the incident.
In the outpour of sorrow and tears, many also recounted his calm nature and good deeds.
His wife, Mrs Charity Opoku-Agyeman, sobbed as she spoke fondly of her husband, recounting their activities till that fatal afternoon.
She said she had just returned from the market and was entering their bedroom when she heard a loud noise.
“I trembled and screamed, “Pastor!” and rushed to the bath house. When l entered, l saw him lying supine, with blood oozing from where the bullet had hit him,” she said.
According to Mrs Opoku-Agyeman, her husband had complained of sickness last Sunday, for which reason he could not attend church to perform his priestly function of preaching.
She said she had, therefore, gone to the church to inform the elders about her husband’s condition, after which she had taken him to the SDA Hospital at Kwadaso where he was treated and given some medication.
Before then, Mrs Opoku-Agyeman said the pastor had complained of some eye problems and, therefore, she had taken him to the Madam Catherine Herbal Clinic at South Suntreso where he had been given some concoctions to use.
She said her dear husband was told to return for further treatment, but that was not to be until yesterday’s tragedy.
As of the time of filing this report, the police had visited the crime scene and conveyed the body to the morgue at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital.