IOWA CITY, Iowa – A college student from Africa warned that someone or something was “going to kill me” on a frantic 911 call shortly before his January death in northeast Iowa, a prosecutor acknowledged this week while saying he remains confident in the conclusion the death was an accident.
Authorities have declined for months to publicly release key details about the death of Luther College student Nana Kwasi Baffour-Awuah. But Winneshiek County Attorney Andy Van Der Maaten provided the most complete account yet of the investigation during an interview with The Associated Press.
Van Der Maaten acknowledged that Baffour-Awuah pleads for help and appears to warn “he’s going to kill me” or “that’s going to kill me” on a 911 call placed at 1:45 a.m. on Jan. 1 and that investigators found evidence Baffour-Awuah was running at the time. He said Baffour-Awuah’s cell phone was found broken near a campus building where he unsuccessfully tried to tell the 911 dispatcher where he could be found. And his body had some scratches on it; his jacket was recovered across campus.
The prosecutor also said investigators have no evidence of foul play and are standing by the conclusion that the 24-year-old accidentally died from hypothermia on the small, liberal arts college campus in Decorah. They say he froze after coming home from a party and was locked out of his dormitory because he forgot his keys. Authorities say hypothermia symptoms such as disorientation were aggravated by a blood alcohol level of more than twice the legal limit to drive and he died after wandering down a wooded, snow-covered embankment.
Questions still have persisted on campus about the death of the popular student and residence hall adviser from Tema, Ghana. Friends say Baffour-Awuah would have called campus security if he were locked out as he’d done before and that the 911 call previously shared with Baffour-Awuah’s family led them to believe he was being chased.
“For those of us whom it means something to, this is something that’s never going to go away until we get answers,” said friend and former roommate Ekow Blankson.
