By: Haja Hawa Koroma
18 years old Alex Kanneh, residing at 53 old Allen town road, bottle field Calaba town, died in a tragic and mysterious fire outbreak on the 19th May 2022 at the early hours of 2am.
According to his neighbours, the deceased was an orphan who had lost both parents to the cold hands of death and was living with his elder brother at the said address. Alex was a barber who took up this profession after he had dropped out of school at JSS two. He had a small wooden kiosk which was his barbing shop and also a play station were youths in the community especially men come to play and barb their hair, because he was well known in the community.
One of his neighbours M’Balu narrated that Alex always sleeps in his barber shop at night, but in most cases he doesn’t sleep alone. When there is light in the area his friends will be playing the P. S (Play Station) throughout the night in his shop. But on this fateful day, they didn’t sleep in the kiosk as there was no light for two days in the area therefore Alex was left to sleep alone in his barbing shop.
His neighbour’s said that they were awoken from the sight of the fire outbreak not knowing what caused it. Alex was inside his kiosk alone when the fire started and took over till he got burnt, the youths in the community tried to put out the fire but it was too late as he was already dead before they were able to put it out.
The amazing and mysterious thing is that no one knows, not even the police knows what actually started the fire. It was mysterious indeed, because when interviewed, the neighbour’s confirmed that there was nothing they could pinpoint to have started the fire.
They were asked whether or not there were any electrical appliances in the shop that would have started the fire, the neighbour’s stated that it was a local barbing shop therefore Alex didn’t have any electrical appliances that would have caused the fire and also there was no light in the area that would have given electricity to the electrical appliances even if there were any.
When asked also whether it would have been that Alex was using a candle or a local lamp as a means to light up the place due to darkness since there was no light, they confirmed that he doesn’t uses any of those as he only uses Chinese lights to light up his shop.
Now, the biggest question is what could have caused the fire? Also, from my observations at the crime scene, the barbers shop is a small wooden kiosk, and it is a mystery that he was unable to save himself from that fire because he must have felt the heat from the flames or perhaps smell the smoke to have been able to act quickly and open the door of the kiosk to have escape death, even if he would have sustained some injuries like burns from the fire.
Now this begs the questions, what if it was no ordinary accident? What if he was killed and someone started the fire to cover up the crime staging it like he got dead from the incident, and what if he was under some influence of some sort and he was unable to save himself? All fingers are crossed as A-Z follows updates of this story and awaits the autopsy results in an attempt to unravel what actually happened.
