Kingsley Ofosu
Encyclopedia
Kingsley Ofosu is a Ghana
ian who made international news in 1992, when he survived the slaughter of a group African stowaway
s by the crew of the Bahamian
-flagged cargo ship
McRuby. In all, eight men were killed, including Ofosu’s brother. Ofosu was the only survivor.
Ofosu’s ordeal was dramatized in the 1996 feature film
Deadly Voyage
, produced by Union Pictures for distribution to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Home Box Office
(HBO). The film starred Omar Epps
as Ofosu.
.
-flagged, Ukrainian
-crewed cargo ship
, on October 24, 1992. The ship was docked in Takoradi, taking on a load of cocoa. The stowaways had wanted to travel to Europe
, where each man had hoped to find a more prosperous life than what was available to them in Ghana. Ofosu specifically had hoped to pursue his studies so that he could return to Ghana as a trained engineer. After hiding within the ship's holds, the group discovered another stowaway, not previously known to them, who had boarded the ship at its previous stop in Douala, Cameroon.
Six days into the voyage, the group’s water container was broken, forcing them to begin ferreting about the ship in search of more. This allowed them to be discovered by the ship’s crew. The crew took all of the group’s money and then confined them, without food or water, in the compartment containing the ship’s anchor. Eventually, the crew began removing the group two to three at time. Although they told the men that they were being moved to a more comfortable accommodation, the crew in fact had decided to murder the men, beating them with an iron bar and shooting them, and then throwing them overboard somewhere off the coast of Portugal
. It was later determined that their motive was to avoid the heavy fine they would have faced for bringing illegal immigrants into a Western port.
Ofosu and Codjoe were the last two to be removed from the compartment. As they were brought out, they noticed the blood on the crewmen’s clothing and surmised what was about to occur. They attempted to break away, but Codjoe was shot and thrown overboard. Ofosu successfully escaped back into the bowels of the ship and went back into hiding, successfully eluding the crew’s searches for him for three days until the ship reached port in Le Havre, France.
The crew members soon confessed to the crimes and six of them were later tried in Rouen. Defense attorneys disputed some of the details of Ofosu's story, noting that searches failed to turn up the money he claimed had been taken by the crew. They also argued that he might have misidentified specific crew members and that the Cameroonian stowaway had jumped into the sea shortly after the group's discovery. But the core of the remainder of Ofosu's narrative went largely unchallenged, with two crew members explicitly acknowledging their culpability and identifying the ship's first mate, Valery Artemenko, as the one who gave the order to kill the men. The ship's captain, Vladimir Ilnitskiy, testified that he had not ordered the murders but acknowledged that he had also done nothing to stop them.
In the end, five members of the crew were convicted, with Ilnitskiy and Artemenko each receiving a life sentence in prison. Three other crew members, Oleg Mikhailevsky, Petr Bondarenko and Sergei Romashenko, each received a 20-year sentence. Prior to the trial, Ofosu had expressed some disappointment that French law would not permit the imposition of a death sentence upon the crew members. The sixth crew member tried, Georgian
Dzhamal Arakhamiya, insisted that he had refused to participate in the murders. Ofosu did not specifically identify Arakhamiya as one of the culprits and he was acquitted.
French harbor police noted that Ofosu's story was unusual only in that he survived, but not in the murderous actions of the McRubys crew, as there was no way to know how many other crews had committed similar killings without being caught. A devout Christian
, Ofosu attributed his unlikely survival to Divine Providence
.
and learning French. However, his studies were not completed and he remained unable to find anything but low-wage employment.
Eventually, Ofosu put all of his remaining money into a business venture whose goal was to purchase second-hand electrical goods in France and then sell them at a profit in Ghana. After an initial success, his partnerships in Ghana soured and the business failed. As of 2007, Ofosu was once again living in Ghana with his wife and four children, his impoverished lifestyle not substantially different from the one he had attempted to escape in 1992.
Ofosu said that Union Pictures’ representatives told him that since HBO and the BBC were the ones which funded the film, the needed figures would have to come from those two entities. Ofosu said that neither of the two companies had responded to his inquiries. Union Pictures has since gone bankrupt, but its former head, Bradley Adams, said that he also had tried to get the figures from HBO and the BBC but was able to make no progress. Adams said that he also has seen no net profits from the film.
In 1995, at the end of the trial of the ship’s crew, French courts had also ordered €100,000 in compensation be paid to Ofosu. As of 2007, Ofosu said that he had seen none of these funds either, with all of his efforts to pursue the matter with the French Ministry of Justice having been rebuffed.
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
ian who made international news in 1992, when he survived the slaughter of a group African stowaway
Stowaway
A stowaway is a person who secretly boards a vehicle, such as an aircraft, bus, ship, cargo truck or train, to travel without paying and without being detected....
s by the crew of the Bahamian
The Bahamas
The Bahamas , officially the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, is a nation consisting of 29 islands, 661 cays, and 2,387 islets . It is located in the Atlantic Ocean north of Cuba and Hispaniola , northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands, and southeast of the United States...
-flagged cargo ship
Cargo ship
A cargo ship or freighter is any sort of ship or vessel that carries cargo, goods, and materials from one port to another. Thousands of cargo carriers ply the world's seas and oceans each year; they handle the bulk of international trade...
McRuby. In all, eight men were killed, including Ofosu’s brother. Ofosu was the only survivor.
Ofosu’s ordeal was dramatized in the 1996 feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
Deadly Voyage
Deadly Voyage
Deadly Voyage is a 1996 television film directed by John Mackenzie and written by Stuart Urban. Produced by Union Pictures and John Goldschmidt's Viva Films for joint distribution to BBC Films and HBO Films, it tells the true story of Kingsley Ofosu, the sole survivor of a group of nine African...
, produced by Union Pictures for distribution to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Home Box Office
Home Box Office
HBO, short for Home Box Office, is an American premium cable television network, owned by Time Warner. , HBO's programming reaches 28.2 million subscribers in the United States, making it the second largest premium network in America . In addition to its U.S...
(HBO). The film starred Omar Epps
Omar Epps
Omar Hashim Epps is an American actor, singer, songwriter, and record producer. His film roles include Major League II, Juice, Higher Learning, Scream 2, The Wood, In Too Deep, and Love and Basketball. Epps' television work includes the role of Dr. Dennis Gant on the US medical drama series ER,...
as Ofosu.
Early life
Born in Ghana in 1970, Kingsley Ofosu was the eldest of four children and left school early to help his mother make a living selling produce. He had wanted to be come an automotive engineer, but lacked the money to pursue the necessary studies in that field. Instead, as a young man, he found intermittent work on the docks in the port of TakoradiSekondi-Takoradi
Sekondi-Takoradi, population 335,000 , comprising the twin cities of Sekondi and Takoradi, is the capital of the Western Region of Ghana. It is Ghana's fourth largest city and an industrial and commercial center. The chief industries are timber, plywood, shipbuilding and railroad repair and...
.
Voyage
According to Ofosu, he and seven other Ghanaians, including his half-brother Albert Codjoe, stowed away aboard the McRuby, a BahamianThe Bahamas
The Bahamas , officially the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, is a nation consisting of 29 islands, 661 cays, and 2,387 islets . It is located in the Atlantic Ocean north of Cuba and Hispaniola , northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands, and southeast of the United States...
-flagged, Ukrainian
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
-crewed cargo ship
Cargo ship
A cargo ship or freighter is any sort of ship or vessel that carries cargo, goods, and materials from one port to another. Thousands of cargo carriers ply the world's seas and oceans each year; they handle the bulk of international trade...
, on October 24, 1992. The ship was docked in Takoradi, taking on a load of cocoa. The stowaways had wanted to travel to Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, where each man had hoped to find a more prosperous life than what was available to them in Ghana. Ofosu specifically had hoped to pursue his studies so that he could return to Ghana as a trained engineer. After hiding within the ship's holds, the group discovered another stowaway, not previously known to them, who had boarded the ship at its previous stop in Douala, Cameroon.
Six days into the voyage, the group’s water container was broken, forcing them to begin ferreting about the ship in search of more. This allowed them to be discovered by the ship’s crew. The crew took all of the group’s money and then confined them, without food or water, in the compartment containing the ship’s anchor. Eventually, the crew began removing the group two to three at time. Although they told the men that they were being moved to a more comfortable accommodation, the crew in fact had decided to murder the men, beating them with an iron bar and shooting them, and then throwing them overboard somewhere off the coast of Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
. It was later determined that their motive was to avoid the heavy fine they would have faced for bringing illegal immigrants into a Western port.
Ofosu and Codjoe were the last two to be removed from the compartment. As they were brought out, they noticed the blood on the crewmen’s clothing and surmised what was about to occur. They attempted to break away, but Codjoe was shot and thrown overboard. Ofosu successfully escaped back into the bowels of the ship and went back into hiding, successfully eluding the crew’s searches for him for three days until the ship reached port in Le Havre, France.
Investigation and trial
Upon the arrival in Le Havre, Ofosu slipped off of the ship and made his way to a police station, where he reported to the authorities what had occurred during the voyage. Prior to leaving the ship, he had left his Ghanaian identification papers in one of the ship’s cocoa sacks, providing evidence of the truth of his story once it was found. Human excrement found in the cargo hold also provided corroboration that other stowaways had originally been aboard.The crew members soon confessed to the crimes and six of them were later tried in Rouen. Defense attorneys disputed some of the details of Ofosu's story, noting that searches failed to turn up the money he claimed had been taken by the crew. They also argued that he might have misidentified specific crew members and that the Cameroonian stowaway had jumped into the sea shortly after the group's discovery. But the core of the remainder of Ofosu's narrative went largely unchallenged, with two crew members explicitly acknowledging their culpability and identifying the ship's first mate, Valery Artemenko, as the one who gave the order to kill the men. The ship's captain, Vladimir Ilnitskiy, testified that he had not ordered the murders but acknowledged that he had also done nothing to stop them.
In the end, five members of the crew were convicted, with Ilnitskiy and Artemenko each receiving a life sentence in prison. Three other crew members, Oleg Mikhailevsky, Petr Bondarenko and Sergei Romashenko, each received a 20-year sentence. Prior to the trial, Ofosu had expressed some disappointment that French law would not permit the imposition of a death sentence upon the crew members. The sixth crew member tried, Georgian
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
Dzhamal Arakhamiya, insisted that he had refused to participate in the murders. Ofosu did not specifically identify Arakhamiya as one of the culprits and he was acquitted.
French harbor police noted that Ofosu's story was unusual only in that he survived, but not in the murderous actions of the McRubys crew, as there was no way to know how many other crews had committed similar killings without being caught. A devout Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
, Ofosu attributed his unlikely survival to Divine Providence
Divine Providence
In Christian theology, divine providence, or simply providence, is God's activity in the world. " Providence" is also used as a title of God exercising His providence, and then the word are usually capitalized...
.
Life in France
Ofosu settled in France and had hoped to have his pregnant wife come from Ghana to join him, but was never able to find gainful employment in France, a prerequisite for his family to legally immigrate there. He did, however, strike a deal with Union Pictures for the motion picture rights to his story. The infusion of cash he received from that deal allowed him to sustain himself in France despite his lack of steady employment. For time, he was enrolled in college studying civil engineeringCivil engineering
Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including works like roads, bridges, canals, dams, and buildings...
and learning French. However, his studies were not completed and he remained unable to find anything but low-wage employment.
Eventually, Ofosu put all of his remaining money into a business venture whose goal was to purchase second-hand electrical goods in France and then sell them at a profit in Ghana. After an initial success, his partnerships in Ghana soured and the business failed. As of 2007, Ofosu was once again living in Ghana with his wife and four children, his impoverished lifestyle not substantially different from the one he had attempted to escape in 1992.
Funds possibly owed
According to Ofosu, his deal with Union Pictures entitled him to 1.5 percent of the film’s operating budget and 10% of its net profits. He received an initial check for $67,500 based upon an estimate of the film’s expected budget. But in 2007, he said he had never received a final accounting of the actual budget to be able to determine whether he may be owed more. He had also received nothing by way of a share of any net profits.Ofosu said that Union Pictures’ representatives told him that since HBO and the BBC were the ones which funded the film, the needed figures would have to come from those two entities. Ofosu said that neither of the two companies had responded to his inquiries. Union Pictures has since gone bankrupt, but its former head, Bradley Adams, said that he also had tried to get the figures from HBO and the BBC but was able to make no progress. Adams said that he also has seen no net profits from the film.
In 1995, at the end of the trial of the ship’s crew, French courts had also ordered €100,000 in compensation be paid to Ofosu. As of 2007, Ofosu said that he had seen none of these funds either, with all of his efforts to pursue the matter with the French Ministry of Justice having been rebuffed.