Distraught, heartbroken, emotionally drained and shaken.
That was the wretched image of former Cabinet Minister Charity Ngilu at the Kitui Police Station yesterday moments
after losing a trusted political ally and former mayor of the area Martha Mwangangi in circumstances most tragic.
Ngilu, who was donning her trademark headscarf, wouldn’t talk, except for the tired narration of the events of the day, her eyes swollen, her speech fading away.
Clutching on to her drenched handkerchief, a mobile phone and power-bank, she ruefully narrated the events of the day in what supporters claim was an attempted assassination of the former CS and murder most foul of her bosom
buddy.
“She was not even much onto the side of the road. I was the one on the road proper and she was walking on the outer side,” she narrated to Kitui OCPD Muthuri Mwongera.
“Still, the truck was able to fetch her from the sides, drag her onto the road and crush her,” she said AS
helped her fill the gaps.
The fire-fighting truck, which nearly crushed her to death, was parked at the police station lights still on many hours later. A heavy machine by all looks, Martha must have died a painful death.
Ngilu stared at the fire machine forlornly, its back ominously emblazoned “fire & rescue services” and said: “Lets go!” She ordered her companions and proceeded to exchange contacts with the OCPD.
When we tried to politely ask her for an interview, she respectively rebuffed us: “Please, not now. Maybe tomorrow,” and walked away.
In a convoy, she headed straight to Martha’s home at Kyanika village, a few kilometres away from Kitui town. At the home, a sombre mood engulfed the area. Relatives thronged the home to condole with a family still coming to terms with the sudden events.
The deceased had left at crack of dawn before taking breakfast, summoned by protesting traders to their rescue. She headed the call, never to return home again.
“At the demo, she vowed she’d rather die fighting for the cause of Kitui people than slumber in their pain,” a local leader told us.
Her place of death was the most unlikely - a few yards from the Kitui police station on one side and Kitui Administration police station on the other side. By 5 pm and hours after her death, the place was hardly recognisable, soil having been poured on the splattered blood and vehicles moved over it.
The people she had died fighting for had moved on. Some made turns at the place in motorcycles just to take a glance. Others walked by without uttering a word.
“I was shocked when I saw the truck hurtling down towards the crowds which were escorting Charity from the police station moments after visiting. Before we could move it had already crashed on the crowd,” Mwongera told The Standard on Saturday.
According to the OCPD, the demos of the day in Kalundu area of Kitui Town had been peaceful with only bonfires lit. The fires had gone off after Ngilu arrived and calmed the protesters. But when she was leaving, the boda-boda operators demanded the release of some of their colleagues.
“It is at that point mheshimiwa and Martha came to the police station to check on the alleged arrests and found none other than the usual traffic offenders and we held our ground that we could not release them outside the formal and court processes,” the OCPD said.
