Death inside church: How row on dance floor ended tragically for budding goalkeeper
Mr Ian Mungai 20 who died on April 2, 2023 inside a Catholic Church building in Murang'a after he was allegedly knifed by a 52-year-old man. (Right) The Mugumo-ini Catholic Church under construction in Murang'a County where Mungai died.
On April 1, 2023, Ian Mungai, 20, attended a night party in Mugumo-ini village, Murang’a County. Hours later, his body lay lifeless inside the coolers of a nearby mortuary after a brutal knife attack.
The incident that cut short the life of the local budding footballer started how all big things start –small.
Mungai was dancing happily to a traditional beat when, at around midnight, he accidentally stepped on a 52-year-old man who was also on the dancehall.
For the traditionalists in the Agíkúyú community, it is considered an act of grave disrespect to interrupt the motions of a dancing elder by way of stepping on his feet.
The old man was reported to have been irked by Mungai’s act and demanded an apology.
“There was traditional brew in the party and it was hard to tell who had been served…it was like everyone was drunk…I noted the old man quarrelling with Mungai and dancers were taking sides. The youngsters were siding with Mungai while the elderly were siding with the man,” said Julius Mwangi, an area resident who also attended the party.
But the two were separated by the hosts of the party and the dancing went on, only that the elderly man had left the dancehall in a huff and was heard cursing into the darkness as he vacated the compound that hosted the party.
“You will know that I am the agemate of your father and never again will you ever insult me…I will teach you a lesson that will serve as an example to your agemates,” Mr Mwangi quotes the man as saying as he hurried away from the party.
Mungai, who was the first-choice goalkeeper of the area football team, was popular and his fellow footballers and fans were handy to support him in the conflict.
At around 1am, Mungai and some of his friends decided to leave the party and head home.
Shouted at us to stop
“We were walking discussing the party, football and the future when we reached the Mugumo-ini Catholic Church…from the darkness emerged two men who shouted at us to stop…we were about five. None of us heeded the call of stopping and we started running away,” said a witness statement in the now police case.
The witness said that Mungai appeared to have been the marked man since the two figures that emerged from the darkness pursued him.
“There is a building that belongs to the church under construction and it has no perimeter wall…from the darkness of my hiding place, I heard Mungai scream near the building. He shouted that he had been knifed. I came out of the darkness and cautiously approached the scene where Mungai lay,” the witness told police officers.
He added that he followed the groaning sound of Mungai who had now crawled into the church building “and I found him semiconscious and bleeding profusely…by the look of things, I sensed grave danger and I started screaming while at the same time calling out to neighbours to come and help me take Mungai to hospital”.
It was towards 2.30am when neighbours managed to mobilise transport for Mungai and after they got an introductory note to take him to hospital from Mugumo-ini police patrol base, took him to Sabasaba health centre where he was declared dead on arrival.
The police signal on the incident by Muthithi police station captures the incident as murder.
“Police managed to arrest two suspects who are brothers aged 52 and 43 years…the two were identified by eyewitnesses as the ones who ambushed the deceased and attacked him inflicting fatal injuries that resulted in the death,” the report notes.
The suspect aged 52 had quarrelled with Mungai on the dancefloor earlier.
On April 7, 2023, a postmortem conducted on Mungai’s body at Montezuma Monalisa Mortuary described the injury as “a straight horizontal piercing using a sharp blade that entered from the right breast that raptured the lung”.
It added that Mungai succumbed to excessive bleeding and difficulty in breathing as a result of the fatal attack.
“The blood from the wound accumulated in the raptured wing occasioning him congestion that made breathing hard hence denying the brain supply of oxygen,” the report noted.
Completed a plumbing course
Mungai’s father Mr James Njema said the death has rocked him to the core “since this was my only son who had just completed a plumbing course at Kiranga Vocational Training…I am left with one daughter now and we are all sad as a family and as a village”.
When Mr Njema was called at around 3am to be notified of the incident, he says he thought it was an April Fool’s Day prank and he was about to dismiss the caller “but the hysterical voice reminded me that it was already April 2 and it was not a joke”.
As they prepare to bury Mungai at Mbari ya Kiongo village—some 500 metres from where he met his death—on April 11, Mr Njema hopes that justice will prevail.
The two suspects are being held at Muthithi police station until April 17 when they will be arraigned at Murang’a High Court for plea-taking.
Area residents who spoke to Nation.Africa said the incident was a vote of no confidence against area security and also societal morals.
“How the area administrators allowed a village party that had alcohol to continue deep into the night without police security is strange. How a 52-year-old man can get into a fight with a 20-year-old is a testimony of a society that has no respect among age groups and that attackers can do their thing in a church of God is blasphemous,” said Mzee Kimani Ngugi, 85.
