A Ghanaian academic and forestry scholar at Southern Illinois University (SIU) Carbondale in the United States, Dr Kofi Akamani, has died after he was shot in Illinois.
Dr Akamani, 48, was fatally wounded near Lake Road between Murphysboro and Carbondale at about 5 p.m. on Saturday, according to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office.
Deputies who arrived at the scene found him injured and arranged for him to be transported to Memorial Hospital of Carbondale, where he was pronounced dead.
The circumstances surrounding the shooting remain under investigation.
The sheriff’s office said Dr Akamani’s 35-year-old wife, Betty Akamani, had been arrested in connection with the incident and was facing multiple charges. Authorities, however, have not released further details about the charges or the circumstances that led to the shooting.
The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office cautioned that the investigation was still at an early stage.
Dr Akamani was a professor in SIU Carbondale’s Department of Forestry, where his academic work focused on areas including forest recreation and conservation social science.
His academic career was rooted in Ghana, where he studied Development Planning at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), specialising in Urban Planning.
He subsequently obtained an MPhil from the University of Oslo’s Centre for Development and the Environment in 2006 and later earned a PhD in Natural Resources from the University of Idaho.
His research also maintained a strong connection with Ghana.
During his doctoral studies, Dr Akamani returned to Ghana for six months to conduct research on collaborative forest management and its effects on the social and ecological resilience of two forest-dependent communities in the Ashanti Region.
His death has therefore brought an end to an academic career that spanned Ghana, Europe and the United States and focused on the relationship between communities, natural resources and forest conservation.
The Jackson County Ambulance Service, Jackson County Coroner’s Office and Jackson County State’s Attorney’s Office assisted the sheriff’s office with the investigation.
No further details had been released by authorities at the time of reporting.
