Murders cast dark cloud on Murang'a festivities

Murang’a County has marked the past month with over 20 incidents of cruel murders that made a cloud of grief hover around the Christmas celebrations.

A bad way to close the year 2023, Murang’a Senator Joe Nyutu now feels “there is a very sadistic spirit of death roaming Murang’a villages and the faster we stop it, the better for our peace where we are doing on average, a murder per day”.

Urgent roadmap

Mr Nyutu said, “needed is an urgent roadmap on how to get serious with fight against reckless alcoholism and narcotics, get a county policy to deal with mental illnesses and call out all corrupt law enforcers who for a bribe, let security risk characters and merchants of products that induce raw madness in minds roam the society”.

He said: “this is a serious issue that has given Murang’a a scaring image to the outer public and we cannot just sit around compiling such horrible statistics and stories when these are human lives we are losing so rapidly and indiscriminately in such barbaric versions”.

Mr Nyutu was speaking after police arrested a woman in Mukuyu market in Kiharu constituency who is accused of stabbing her husband to death using a kitchen knife.

Kitchen knife

According to the police incident report, the woman wanted to know from her husband the identity of another woman who had knocked at their door and introduced herself as his girlfriend.

“The woman who had visited the husband from the village accompanied by their six-year-old daughter wanted him to explain about his relationship with the petite female visitor and when he couldn’t, she allegedly took a kitchen knife and fatally stabbed him,” the report read in part.

Kitchen knife 

Earlier in the day, the body of David Kimani, 33, had been retrieved from the roadside in Mung’etho village after he was lynched by his in-law’s neighbours.

According to Murang’a South acting Deputy County Commissioner Joshua Okello, the man had travelled from Gatanga constituency to visit his mother-in-law’s home.

“He had separated from his wife for the past 18 months and he visited saying he wanted to check on them together with his six-year-old daughter,” Okello said.

However, come nightfall the man said he would spend the night at the mother-in-law’s house together with his estranged wife, a request that was granted.

“But a fight between him and his wife erupted in the midnight where he stabbed her five times in the body as the mother-in-law screamed. Neighbours responded to the distress call and murdered the man,” Okello said.

On December 20, 2023, the county woke to the shocking news that a secondary school teacher in Kiawambeu village had butchered his two sons aged five and two and a half years as they slept following a quarrel with his wife. This was the neighbourhood of Mugoiri where a 32-year-old father had slit the throats of his two sons.

This was before a woman, 39, in Kangangu village had on December 23, 2023, clobbered her two sons aged five and three years protesting that her family had refused to support her coronation as a pastor in a cult-like faith in the country that the government has proscribed. 

On December 14, 2023, the family of Mzee Mburu Munyui buried Dorcas Nduta 39, and her mother-in-law Esther Njeri 81 after their bodies had a week earlier been retrieved from River Chania.

On December 5, 2023 Mr James Kamau 52, was in the dead of the night murdered inside his house in Kigoro village when a lone raider armed with an axe and a container of petrol cut him on the head after stealing Sh12, 000 and two phones from him.

On December 25, 2023, the bodies of Mbae Mulumbi, 21, Bernard Mutua, 22, and Francis Muimi 34, and another unidentified one were retrieved from River Chania along the expansive American-owned firm Del Monte with assault-based injuries.

Del Monte guards

Claims were that the four were assaulted by Del Monte guards as they stole pineapples from the plantation.

An autopsy report conducted on December 29, 2023 showed that the four men died of drowning and had assault marks on their bodies.

Dr Benard Midiya acting for the families said “needed to be established is how the physical injuries on the bodies came about”. He said the injuries were concentrated on the head and the neck.

Dr Geoffrey Mutuma representing Del Monte in the autopsy confirmed the injuries found on the bodies, terming them as “minor and superficial” while the head of investigations at the Kenya National Commission for Human Rights (KNCHR), Kamanda Mucheke said the injuries were acts of assault.

“Our preliminary investigations indicate beyond reasonable doubt that the four men were attacked before they were forcibly drowned,” he said.

Mr Mucheke said other four incidents are being investigated involving suspected assault and murder of youths in the same area involving the same suspects.

On December 13, 2023, a police constable attached to Kambi police patrol base fatally attacked Mr Charles Muguro after he allegedly refused to buy him alcohol, Kigumo police boss Mr Kiprono Tanui said investigations against the officer are ongoing.

In 2022, County Commissioner Mr Karuku Ngumo had declared cases of cruelty in the county as a matter of security concern saying that “at the rate we are faring on, cases of murder and suicides are becoming a county tragedy”.

He said, “we must as a county remember that how we troll on social media and other mainstream platforms define our values and currently we are just a county of death”.

Mr Ngumo said, “we must come up with a clarion call of battling the devil and the spirit of barbarism as we tackle the catalysts of derangement that mostly are alcohol and narcotics as well as extremist faiths, family enmity, and sadism”.

Mr Nyutu said: “the search for a solution in this crisis should start now by way of coming together as Murang’a stakeholders and urgently debating the way forward. Meanwhile, our security organs should get serious with the fight against killer brews and narcotic trades since that is one area contributing to violent minds with no respect for human lives”