In the Laikipia case, witnesses said the suspect, who is still at large, stabbed his wife Patricia Wamahiga Mwangi, 30, several times in the stomach before fleeing with their four-year-old son.
Eva Wanjiru, a neighbour to the couple who lived in Baraka Estate, said she heard screams emanating from the house before the child sought refuge in her house.
“I had woken up around 6am and found Wamahiga in the compound as she prepared her child for school. She then went back to the house and they started quarreling, we then heard a sharp scream and then everything went silent,” Wanjiru said.
The assailant, who works as a mason in Nanyuki town, then picked up the child from Wanjiru’s house, locked up his house and left.
Neighbours later discovered he had stabbed Wamahiga several times in the stomach and chest. He left her sprawled on the sofa, covered in blood and with the dagger by her side.
In the couple’s single-roomed house was a blood-soaked seat, three packets of sugar, mukimo — packed in a dish believed to belong to the child — and left over cabbages.
RECOVERED DAGGER
This had been the couple’s home since May when, according to neigbours, the assailant joined Wamahiga.
Police recovered the dagger and three mobile phones, which are believed to belong to the suspect. The fate of the child was still unknown by the time we went to press.
In Kirinyaga, a man slashed his estranged wife, a businesswoman at Kwa Vee slums in Sagana town, as her colleagues watched in utter shock.
According to a witness, Jane Wangechi, the suspect separated with his wife, Phyllis Nyaguthii, 30, two weeks ago over an unknown dispute.
She said the couple separated following numerous domestic quarrels.
“After the separation, Nyaguthii started a second-hand clothes business just 10m from her estranged husband’s house, and she appeared to be doing well,” the witness said.
On the material day, trouble started after the man stopped at a nearby M-Pesa outlet and saw his estranged wife at her place of work. Before long the two started hurling insults at each other.
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“The man, who had parked his vehicle just nearby, then rushed to his car and picked a sharp panga. He brutally attacked his estranged wife, completely disfiguring her head. She collapsed in a pool of blood and died on the spot,” Wangechi said.
Mwea sub-county CID boss Boaz Obeto said the suspect was arrested and the murder weapon recovered at the bloody scene.
The body was taken to Kerugoya Level Five Hospital mortuary.
“We have not established the motive behind the murder, although we are aware they were involved in a bitter domestic quarrel which could have provoked the situation,” Obeto said.
He said the suspect would soon appear in court to face murder charges once investigations were completed.
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