Wanted: Killer gang linked to jailbreak

An elite team of detectives has been deployed to Nyanza Province to track down a killer gang that has been on the prowl since late last year.

A policeman and a taxi driver alleged to have been colluding with the gang have already been arrested and are facing charges.

Two other officers linked to the killing of a businessman during a robbery incident in Kisumu are on the run and are being sought.

Criminal intelligence sources told the Sunday Nation that investigations link the increase in insecurity in the region to 13 hardcore criminals who escaped from Busia Prison on the night of October 3, 2010.

“Our intelligence indicates that the escapees are behind the spate of robberies and killings within Nyanza and parts of Western Province,” a police source said.

Several people have fallen victim to the gang that is alleged to have formed a network within Kisumu town and targets businessmen and civil servants.

Nyanza police boss Njue Njagi said they had noted an increase in crime and had set up a team of elite detectives to track down the perpetrators.

Most of the recent murders and robberies remain unresolved.

Two taxi drivers – James Owiti and Richard Omondi – were murdered by the gang late last month and a third robbed of his car at Riat on the Kisumu-Busia road.

Both taxi drivers met their death a few metres from their homes at Riat, moments after they had left their taxi base.

Mr Owiti’s wife Lilian Akoth said she heard gunshots a few metres from their home and rushed to the spot a few minutes later only to find her husband dead.

He had been shot six times in the chest, head, neck and abdomen. Mr Omondi, on the other hand, was killed 100 metres from the scene after he had talked to his wife Gladys Adhiambo.

Mrs Adhiambo said he informed her that he was on his way home after shopping in town.

Police said that initial investigations revealed the gang had been hired to kill one of the drivers in a love triangle saga but killed the wrong man.

They further said that on realising they had killed the wrong man, the gang went in search of their target and murdered him before escaping.

In another incident, Mr Sam Odondi escaped death by a whisker when gangsters attacked him and robbed him of his car in his compound at Otonglo market, two kilometres away from the scene of the two murders.

In December, another taxi driver was hijacked and killed in the same area.

Residents allege that gangsters have been targeting taxi drivers but police have done little to provide security.

Last December, a KBC and Radio Umoja employee, George Okode Oonyo, was murdered while on his way to visit his family upcountry.

Okode was travelling from Nairobi on December 22 in his private car when four armed gangsters who had barricaded the Kisumu-Busia road at Asala in Gem emerged from the bush and shot him dead.

They took a laptop and an unknown amount of cash during the robbery.

Man abducted

On February 4, Mr Amos Wasonga Oguru, a salesman with a tyre company in Kisumu, was abducted from his Kamakowa home by four men posing as policemen at around 8 a.m.

“They handcuffed me and said I was under arrest for distributing guns to thieves within Kisumu,” Mr Oguru said.

He said the men took his two cell phones and drove him away to Kericho where they withdrew Sh20,000 from his bank account and Sh10,000 from his other account in Kisumu.

However, police who had been alerted by the victim’s wife intercepted the vehicle at Kibuye market and arrested a police officer and a taxi driver.