The Kakamega AP officer who shot dead four colleagues and a school teacher before turning the gun on himself was busted by his wife with a ‘mpango wa kando’ in his house. The ‘mpango,’ Janet Toboso, 20, a Form Three drop-out narrated to ‘The Nairobian’ the sequence of events that led to the tragedy.
On the fateful day, Constable Mustapha Alando’s wife, Sylvia Khamati, arrived at the camp unexpectedly. “On sensing that his wife was around, Alando instructed me not to let her in because the wife reportedly has a fiery temper,” says Toboso. “I also feared she could stab me so I kept the door shut.”
This led to a quarrel between man and wife with Khamati demanding to know what “that malaya” was doing in her house. Toboso explains that Sergent William Esiyen who is in charge of the camp called them to his office for ‘peace talks.’ None of the women was willing to leave the house for them. Another quarrel ensued later at 8pm as the two women could not come to an agreement.
“Sergeant Esiyen called another ‘men meeting’ between Constable Alando, who was at the time on sentry duty, and other four officers who asked him to solve his family issues ‘like a man’ a directive that did not go well with him,” said a source at the Shiatsala AP Camp who declined to be named.
The meeting turned chaotic with Alando accusing a fellow officer of informing his wife that he had brought a woman to the camp. “What man does that?” Alando allegedly demanded before training his gun at sergeant Esiyen, a constable and a corporal.
He walked to another house in the camp occupied by a female constable and her teacher husband and sprayed the walls with bullets killing them instantly.
“He then walked around the camp looking for his wife who had run to a neighbour’s house. He shot at the neighbour but missed and hit the roof,” said an officer at the scene.
He later retreated to the chief’s office where he killed himself. By the time the guns went silent, Sergeant William Esiyen, Corporal Fabian Lumwachi, Constable Daniel Okutoyi, Carren Otiende and Fred Otiende were dead.