A secondary school teacher has committed suicide under unclear circumstances in Shianda area, Mumias East Sub County.
The body of Pius Okumu, aged 45, who committed suicide by hanging himself in his shop was discovered on Sunday morning by his employees.
He had been running a salon, Mpesa and a barber outlet at the rented premises for the last two years.
The deceased, Mr Okumu, was a teacher at St Martha's Mwitoti Secondary school.
In an interview, Dennis Munyanya, his neighbour, who spent time with the deceased on Saturday evening up to 8.00pm, said he never showed any signs of being disturbed by anything.
“After school, he joined us at the shop when we parted ways and agreed to meet the following day. I was shocked when I received news of his death in the morning,” said Mr Munyanya.
Munyanya said he never revealed that he was disturbed, adding that he was a quiet person who never shared his problems with anybody.
“Mr Okumu is very secretive and maintained his conservative life until his death. I wish he shared his problems with us, we would have been willing to help him,” said Munyanya.
Wilfred Akwiri, his landlord, said he has been his tenant for the last two years and never confided to him that he was suffering from anything, leave alone contemplating suicide.
But another neighbour who sought anonymity claimed that the deceased’ family has a history of committing suicide.
Mumias OCPD Peter Kattam said police had launched investigations to the matter, with aim of getting to the root cause of his death.
His body is currently at St Mary's hospital mortuary awaiting postmortem.
