Girl wrongly reported dead on Facebook says her life is in danger

By Irvin John. Jalango | 8yrs ago | 3 min read

Two weeks ago, she was the girl whose photo was splashed on the front page of Daily Nation, which claimed she had committed suicide after a liaison with a foreigner she met on Facebook.

The gist of the story was that Mercy Bundi was lured by the foreigner through Facebook.

A few days later it emerged that, like American writer Mark Twain, the reports about her death were unfounded after she started updating her Facebook page as Mercy Josiah - with her profile picture resembling that of the ‘deceased’ Mercy Bundi.

The story went viral on social media after she ‘resurrected,’ the girl who claims to be a 19-year-old Form Three student in Malindi, now says the whole circus has left her scarred.

Mercy Josiah Muthoni told The Nairobian that she also fears for her life.

So, who is the Mercy Bundi who committed suicide and how did her picture get mixed up with that of Mercy Josiah Muthoni who is alive?

According to the Daily Nation story, a certain Mercy Bundi had met a man by the name of Marco Ritz in Malindi with whom she started an online relationship that ended badly when the two met and Mercy was reportedly sexually assaulted. It is this that allegedly pushed her to commit suicide.

Mercy Bundi’s picture was reportedly given to the daily by her sister, who was identified as Sarah Mauya.

Mercy Josiah Muthoni now states that only the photo was hers, but the whole story about meeting Marco Ritz, the assault and suicide were untrue.

The incident reportedly happened in Malindi. But Mercy says she was in Nairobi at the time, having travelled after the prolonged teachers strike that paralysed learning in the country. She was allegedly putting up at a friend’s house along Thika Highway when the story broke.

“I have never met this Marco Ritz man,” says Mercy. She adds that she has no sister by the name of Sarah. “My sister is Irene,” she says.

Mercy says she visited Daily Nation’s offices to complain and was shown pictures of the dead girl, a suicide note and a photo of the girl who took the story to the paper.

“I was given her number, but it does not go through, though she was online on WhatsApp. We had a chat and later realised she was a mutual friend I met at a cafeteria in Malindi way back. Our chat on WhatsApp did not turn out well, because she started accusing us of defending the German. She sounded bitter with the German from the messages,” explains Mercy.

Was Mercy’s friend trying to fix her? “Right now, I am scared, I cannot even go out in the dark, because I don‘t know what these people want from me,” says Mercy.

Mercy distanced herself from claims that she may have been part of a scheme to extort money from the Nation Media Group by planting a false, defamatory story.

“I did not ask for this to happen. Even the writer admitted that after writing the story, he found out the policeman in the story was a fake, and was actually a taxi driver. How can I be the extortionist?” Mercy posed.

Mercy said that she only found out about the story from friends, and had to come out to assure them she was well. “I was called late in the night by someone who had seen the online version of the story. The next day, my phone was ringing nonstop after the story was published with my picture. That is why I went to social media put the record straight,” she says.

We contacted Sarah, her alleged sister, but she did not respond and our messages went unanswered. She later blocked our number.

Mercy’s parents were not amused. They are worried sick about their daughter. But efforts to talk to them were futile because “they have a new orange line which she could not remember.”