Kayole police officers charged with murder of Sh72m Stanchart heist mastermind
Vincent Wycliffe Oduor when he was charged in a Nairobi court last year. His lawyer claims police executed him. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
Four police officers from Kayole Police station have this morning been charged with the murder of Wycliffe Vincent Oduor, the main suspect behind the Sh72million heist at a Standard Chartered Bank in Nairobi.
Corporals Joseph Ojode Obambo and Charles Kirimi were charged alongside Police Constables Bashir Ali and Henry Mutai.
The four pleaded not guilty and were remanded until June 21 when the matter will be mentioned.
The four were arrested on Monday and detained at Capitol Hill Police Station after the Directorate of Public Prosecutions recommended that they face the murder charges.
The Internal Affairs Unit is also investigating Corporal Ojode’s link to two other extrajudicial cases and enforced disappearance in Kayole and Eastlands.
The late Oduor aka ‘Vinii’ was killed on March 24 2020 at Kayole junction a few months after he had been released on bond by the court after they were charged with robbery with violence alongside five others.
The incident happened when he alongside two others reportedly engaged police officers (who were responding to a distress call) in a shootout in Kayole.
The gang is said to have defied orders to surrender instead, engaging the officers in a fiery shootout that left the suspect dead. His accomplices escaped in a motorbike
At the time, the deceased was out on bond after he was charged with the bank heist in which he and others posing as police officers in escort duties robbed G4S personnel of the amount in Nairobi West.
The G4S team had collected the cash at around 6am and transported it to the bank when they were attacked by the thugs who offloaded the money onto a Toyota Noah and fled.
Locals also claimed that the officers had arrived at the scene with him in a Toyota Probox and started dragging him before shooting at him.
“They got out of the vehicle and started pulling and pushing him. He ran away and entered a barber shop but the officers pulled him out, dragged him behind the building and then we heard a gunshot,” a local businessman told Nation at the time.
