Policeman sets female colleague’s car on fire at Kakamega Police Lines
A police officer's car that set on fire by a colleague inside Kakamega Police Lines.
Detectives in Kakamega are investigating an arson case involving a police officer who allegedly torched his female colleague’s car inside Kakamega Police Lines on Tuesday morning.
According to a police report, Constable Evans Kamau set ablaze the car, a Toyota Allion, using a matchstick and a mattress following a misunderstanding with the policewoman, said to be his neighbour at the station.
Constable Gladys Kimanzi, an officer attached to Kabras Traffic Base, reported that she had a misunderstanding with Mr Kamau at 9pm on Monday and he had walked out in huff with some of his belongings.
Hours later, the neighbourhood was woken up by flames of her car burning in the compound.
“Today August 1, 2023, at about 0230hrs, the said police Constable Evans Kamau deliberately set ablaze the complainant's motor vehicle…using a mattress and a matchstick,” the police report seen by the Nation reads in part.
Police officers within the station managed to put out the fire but the bonnet and the front part of the vehicle was extensively damaged by the fire.
The scene was processed and documented by scene of crime officers and two matchboxes were found in Mr Kamau’s possession and kept as exhibits.
The officer, who appeared drunk, was arrested and is set to face arson charges.
The cause of the misunderstanding is yet to be revealed.
Similar past cases of police officers attacking their female colleagues revolved around love triangles even as research also linked such attacks and murders within the service to work-related trauma.
In January 2021, Constable Lawrence Ewoi from Kamukunji police station was shot dead near Burma market after killing his female colleague following a quarrel over undisclosed reasons.
The deceased had shot and killed Constable Maureen Achieng inside a police car as she and her colleagues prepared to go for night patrols at around 9.30pm.
The two had quarrelled over undisclosed reasons outside the police station before Constable Ewoi, who was armed with his G3 rifle, stepped back and opened fire at his colleague at close range as she sat in the vehicle. He then fled the scene.
Constable Achieng succumbed instantly from four bullet hits that also hit another officer in the left arm.
In April of the same year, 33-year-old Hudson Wasike, who worked as a General Service Unit officer seconded to former Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i’s security detail, shot his wife Pauline Wakasa, then a traffic officer, before killing himself. The incident following a suspected domestic quarrel.
The widely published incident and confessions by female police officers triggered a move by the Ministry of Interior to attempt to bar officers from having romantic affairs with each other as part of police reforms aimed at addressing rising cases of sexual harassment and gender-based violence within the police service.
