Young mother, 22, accused of dumping newborn baby in a toilet

The body of a newborn baby, who has been missing for seven days, has been found dumped in a church toilet in Kiandai village, Kirinyaga County.

The body of the baby girl was retrieved from the toilet on Monday night at St Luke Kiandai Anglican Church.

The child’s mother led the police to the scene where she dumped her daughter after escaping from Kianyaga Sub-County Hospital where she had delivered.

Emotions ran high as police and officers from the Kirinyaga County disaster management team retrieved the partly decomposed body of the child.

Kirinyaga East sub-county police boss Anthony Wanjuu said it was an uphill task to remove the body from the toilet.

"We struggled but we managed to retrieve it," said Mr Wanjuu adding that a murder charge will be preferred against the woman, who is a bar attendant.

The police boss said at first, the woman lied that she had sold her baby in Juja but later revealed during interrogation where she had dumped the baby.

Mr Wanjuu said the suspect, who hails from Redsoil village in the neighbouring Mwea constituency, had been living alone in a rented house.

The suspect was on July 3 rushed to the hospital after she developed labour pains. However, on July 5, the woman sneaked out of the hospital with her baby unnoticed, leaving the nurses worried as she had not been officially discharged from the health facility.

The matter was immediately reported to the police who started searching for the woman.

Following a tip-off by residents, the officers found the 22-year-old woman inside her rental house without the baby.

Locals said they became suspicious after the woman returned home without a baby and informed the police.

"We became suspicious when we didn't see the baby. A few minutes later we saw the police and informed them that the lady was in her house and they seized her," one of the residents, Peter Muriithi said