In an incident in February last year, a woman was clobbered on the back of the head with a blunt object similar to an axe at an estate opposite the Kerugoya Law Courts. She was alone in the house when she was killed. Nothing was stolen from her and no arrests were made. And in October last year, a college student staying with his father during his field attachment at the Site and Service (Katheri) Estate had also died in similar circumstances. He had been accosted during a weekend when he was alone in the house. Besides being clobbered on the head, the youth had also been strangled but nothing was reportedly stolen from the house.
On January 2, this year at about 4pm, the body of Dickson Mwangi Uthi, 53, the deputy principal at Ngungu Day Mixed Secondary School in Kirinyaga East District, was discovered lying in a pool of blood inside a kitchen store at his house within Kimbimbi market.
The body had three stab wounds in the left eye, neck and the chest. The rear door to the house was found open and nothing was stolen.
Back to Miringa-Iri Estate where the Lands Officer and his wife had died, a house girl was also accosted in a house she was sleeping alone, raped and killed while at the Site and Service Estate, a Court Process Server was killed in similar fashion recently. In both incidents nothing was reported to have been stolen.
Others who have died in similar circumstances include a nurse at the Kerugoya District Hospital who was killed in a house she had rented at some flats opposite the Kerugoya Boys High School. The same flats were also the scene of another murder of yet another single woman â a banker who lived alone. Yet another woman who was an accountant at the Kirinyaga District Farmers Sacco was accosted at her rented residence at the district hospital quarters nearby and clobbered to death.
In all these murders, all the victims had been clobbered on the head with a blunt object and their doors left ajar with nothing being stolen from them.
lucky escape
Early in January, a woman teacher working in a public secondary school escaped death by a whisker when she managed to scare off an intruder who had gained access into her house by cutting the metal grills on her window and then smashing the wooden door to her bedroom.
The lucky teacher was alone in her house when the intruder gained access and she lay in wait as he smashed the bedroom door and unexpectedly grabbed the assailant forcing him to panic and escape. Giving the police a good pointer about the assailant was that he had dropped a small axe as he left in panic.
Esther Wawira, an accountant working in Kerugoya town says she has given up her rented premises in the town and decided to live at her parentsâ home almost 40 kilometres outside the town.
"My safety and security counts above everything else including the convenience of an independent lifestyle," says Wawira, 32, who has been living alone since falling out with her fiancé almost four years ago.
Fredrick Kinyua "Shujaa," the chairman of community policing in Kagumo market, says residents in the area are apprehensive that there could be hired hit men on the prowl.
