‘She is my wife and she infected me with HIV’: Man stuns court with bizarre claims

“She is my wife and she infected me with HIV. If I buy food, she takes all of it to the pastor and she does this every day. The pastor also bought her a phone”.

These were the words of a distraught 41-year-old man as he pleaded guilty to assaulting a pastor at a church in Mombasa.

The suspect, JHK, appeared before Mombasa Principal Magistrate Vincent Adet for assaulting a pastor at one of the local churches.
He was charged that on March 13, he assaulted the man of the cloth identified as SGM, thereby causing him actual bodily harm.

“Yes it is true I beat him up,” said the suspect explaining why he lost his temper and attacked the pastor.

He explained that on the said day, around 11am, he went to the church located in Mombasa to ask the pastor why his wife had taken so long in his church.

When the suspect arrived at the church, he approached the pastor for a discussion, but the man of the cloth pushed him away.

"I became irritated and slapped him on the neck because he disrespected me while my wife went to his church with children for no apparent reason," he explained.

According to the suspect, since they were in a slippery area, the complainant fell and started screaming for help. The court heard that neighbours who heard the screams responded swiftly and rescued the man of the cloth.

The suspect further claimed that Pastor SGM threatened him after he was rescued by the neighbours.

“He insisted that I will ‘see’, I never knew what he meant,” said the suspect.

The suspect said that after a few days, a village elder informed him that Pastor SGM had reported the matter to the police.

“I was arrested and escorted to the police station where I recorded a statement,” he said in his witness statement.

In his statement to the police, which was also produced in court, Pastor SGM said the suspect and his two friends stormed his church and accused him of taking his wife away.

“When they approached where I was seated, the suspect came directly to me and started slapping me while claiming that I took his wife to stay in my church,” he said.

According to the pastor, the suspect had a dispute with his wife and he chased her away from their house.

“Because his wife is one of the church members, she came to seek refuge in the church,” he said.

According to the pastor, the suspect beat him several times while his friends watched.

“I screamed but before the rescuers arrived, he wrestled me down the slope. I got injured on my right hand between the index finger and the thumb. Neighbours came to rescue me but the suspect insisted on teaching me a lesson not to give refuge to people’s wives,” he said.

The complainant, however, said that because he was a pastor, he is not supposed to chase away someone who has a problem and needs assistance.

“In fact, I had sent the woman to the village elder to solve their issues but the suspect came and attacked me before appearing before the village elder to solve their difference,” he said. 

The complainant said he reported the matter to the police and also sought treatment for the injuries he suffered during the fracas.

He was issued with a P3 form, which was also produced in court as evidence.

State Counsel Hillary Isiaho told the court that the suspect stormed the complainant’s church in the company of his two friends before attacking the pastor.

The prosecutor told the court that the couple had had differences before the woman left to seek refuge at the church.

“The suspect followed his wife and found the pastor outside the church and, without asking any questions, he started hitting the pastor with a fist on the face and the head before wrestling him down while complaining that the pastor was having a love affair with his wife,” he said.

The magistrate has ordered pre-sentence and victim impact assessment reports before sentencing the suspect.

The matter will be mentioned on April 5.

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