Edmund Owusu

Edmund Owusu was shot in the leg and groin by two men at 8.50pm on Saturday 17 January 1987 at a car park in Hammersmith. He died in hospital a few hours later in the early hours of 18 January 1987 at 2.27am.

He died from massive blood loss.

Edmund Owusu had been a car park attendant at an NCP car park in Sussex Place, Hammersmith. The car park was beneath the flyover at Hammersmith Bridge Road. He had been the car park attendant there for five years.

The car park was next to the Hammersmith Odeon Theatre where Alice in Wonderland had been playing and it was said to have been a busy time.

A friend of Edmund Owusu had stopped by the car park kiosk that Edmund Owusu was working in at about 5.50pm to speak to him. His wife later called him at 7pm at the kiosk but said that Edmund Owusu told her that he was very busy at the time as customers were coming in and that he would call her back.

It was noted that the show at the Odeon was due to start at 8pm but that it wasn't until 8.20pm that it actually got going and it was noted that car were still arriving at the car park as late as until 8.45pm.

When Edmund Owusu was shot at 8.50pm a man that had been standing at the bus stop in Hammersmith Bridge Road with some other people heard the shots and recognised them as gunshots and shouted for someone to call the police and then ran towards the kiosk where he found Edmund Owusu bleeding.

Meanwhile, another man that had been walking towards the bus stop said that after hearing the shots that he saw two men weaving about through some cars, noting that one had been wearing a duffle coat and had seemed to be tugging something into the front of it.

The men that shot Edmund Owusu were said to have fled towards King Street in Hammersmith following the shooting and then off into Angel Walk before disappearing. Two shots were said to have been heard fired and the police said that his killers got away with the car park takings, thought to have been less than £100. The door to his kiosk had been broken in but it was noted that there was still money left lying on the counter.

It was noted that Edmund Owusu had been the victim of robbers twice before.

Whilst the police said that they thought that the motive behind the shooting was robbery, they said that it was a robbery gone wrong and that after breaking into the kiosk that the robbers would have then found that the money was kept in a safe in the floor of the hut and that Edmund Owusu didn't have a key to the safe.

The police noted that the fact that two shots were fired indicated that it was a brutal murder as the second shot was wholly unnecessary as the first shot would have seriously injured Edmund Owusu and he would have been beyond offering any resistance at all.

The police said that one of the gunmen had been white whilst his accomplice had been wearing a duffle coat with the hood up and that after they fled towards King Street that they had run in front of a motorist causing him to sound his horn and said that they wanted to speak to the motorist. They said that he had been driving along the A4 Hammersmith Bridge Road approaching Hammersmith Broadway from the direction of Heathrow.

After he was shot he was taken to Charing Cross Hospital in Fulham and it was noted that two men called at the hospital at about 2pm on the Sunday to find out how he was and the police said that they were trying to trace the two men to eliminate them from their enquiries. However, the police said that they later found that they were his friends.

The men were:

1. White, early 20s, medium build, 5ft 10in tall, long fair hair, casually dressed in a grey or fawn bomber jacket.
2. Coloured, slightly taller than his friend, smartly dressed.

The police later appealed to car thieves to help them in the murder investigation, stating that they believed that three men that had broken into a car nearby at the time might have seen the shooting. The police said, 'This car was broken into within 20 minutes of the shooting. Three figures were seen running from the car park. They were possibly disturbed by the shooting and just possibly may have seen something before they broke into the car. We realise it's a bit of a hopeless appeal, but breaking into a car is not a terribly serious offence in comparison to murder. They may have it on their conscience, or  their parents might know about it and could tell us anonymously'.

It was noted that it had been bitterly cold that January weekend and that there had been snow and ice on the ground.

Edmund Owusu had lived in Dacre Road in Upton Park, London. He had come to Britain from Ghana in 1967 with his wife and three children following later.