Police yet to unravel boy’s killers nine years on

By Wairimu Kamande

They had gone to hunt wild rabbits, but the six boys from Thika’s Makongeni Estate ended up being the hunted instead.

It was on July 15, 2000, when five of the boys, aged between 14 and 17 years, were burnt to death by villagers of Munyu, Thika District.

Irene Waweru, the mother to 14-year-old Julius Waweru who was in Standard Eight at the time recalls the sad with a lot of pain.

The single mother of three remembers how her son went hunting with friends after he was sent out of school for not carrying a PE kit.

"I unsuccessfully searched for him in all places I thought he could have gone," she remembers.

After a troubled night, Irene woke up early in the morning and prepared to widen her search.

But just before she left, James Nzioka, a friend to her son knocked the door. He informed her that Waweru had been arrested the previous day and taken to Thika Police Station.

"Julius had never been involved in any criminal activity before. The news that he had been arrested did not make sense to me," she says, her eyes clouding with tears.

Mistaken for thieves

But when she arrived at the police station, she was surprised to find four other parents also looking for their sons. They were yet to be allowed to see them and it was yet to be explained why the boys were being held.

Even when their demands to be allowed to see the boys persisted, police remained reluctant.

After what seemed like eternity, a courageous policeman dropped the bombshell; the teenagers had been lynched by villagers on suspicion that they were thieves who had been terrorising residents.

The lynched boys included: Walter Midamba then aged 17 and a form three student at Makwa Secondary School, Julius Nduati, 14, a Standard Eight pupil at Kenyatta Primary School, Ibrahim Mburu, Juma Musyimi, and Maina Boy.

On hearing the sad news, Irene recalls how she immediately fainted in shock.

"When I regained consciousness, I found myself in my house. I later came to learn that Julius and four of his friends had been slashed, clobbered and then burnt beyond recognition. It was such a brutal death," she says, tears now flowing freely.

Irene says she was told villagers had complained of criminals who had been stealing from them and raping women and young girls.

The latest criminal act had been reported a day before the boys were murdered. She says the villagers claimed the boys were the criminals.

Irene says the boy who managed to escape from the mob told her that they had gone to the plains near the village to hunt for rabbits when disaster struck.

The boy said they also had their dogs for the hunting mission.

The boy recalled how a rabbit they had been chasing escaped forcing them to pursue it to a private farm where it disappeared into a hole.

The boys decided to patiently wait for it at the entrance. As they kept watch, Nzioka said alarms were raised and within no time, villagers had gathered ready to attack them.

Suspects released

Sensing danger, the boy persuaded the others to flee with him but they would not heed his advice.

He said he called Julius in particular but he allegedly insisted they were innocent and that the villagers would soon realise the truth and leave them.

But Julius was mistaken. As Nzioka fled, the villagers descended on the minors with machetes and sticks before setting them ablaze.

Irene has never come to terms with her son’s painful death.

She laments that during court proceedings, nothing was brought to justify that the boys were criminals and neither did any woman or girl complain that she had been raped by any of them.

Several people were arrested to help in the investigations.

Irene and the other parents hoped the police would identify the killers and have them charged in court.

However, she laments that those arrested were later released by the court for lack of evidence.

Thika OCPD, Mr Mudambi Kola told CCI the incident took place a long time ago adding that tracing the files to establish how the matter ended has been difficult.

The families of the five children still hope that police will carry out investigations to enable them arrest the killers.

However, nine years on, the police appear to have given up and files have been misplaced.

The parents have now resigned to fate but hope that one day their sons killers will be punished.

But before the day comes, Irene will still preserve the newspapers that carried stories of how her son and his friends were murdered by irrate villagers. The preservation, she says, is for posterity and for others to read how her beloved son met her death.